62 per cent in 1988 (ABS 2009). By 2007 94 per cent of employees were
covered (91 per cent of the workforce—contributions are not compulsory for
the self-employed). By 2015 superannuation assets, spread across more than
31 million individual accounts, had swelled to more than $2 trillion, equiva-
lent to 125 per cent of Australia’s GDP.
10.2 The History and Political Economy of‘Super’
Historical accident, political pragmatism, and Australia’s unique industrial
system have paved the way for and sustained superannuation rather than
deliberate agitation by social reformers. Social security in the USA in 1935
and earnings-related state pensions in the UK in 1948, by contrast, arose from
radical policy agendas, prompted by the devastation of the Great Depression,
which envisaged a greater role for government. Despite multiple attempts to
replicate such policies in Australia, public interference in retirement saving
and provision was remarkably minimal until the 1980s.
While some government instrumentalities (such as railways) and some
state governments had superannuation for their employees, the story of
super really begins with the conservative Bruce-Page government’s setting
up of a Royal Commission in 1923 into prospects for an Australian equivalent
of the UK’s 1911 national insurance legislation.‘One of the main causes of
industrial unrest is the ever-present dread which haunts the workers of the
privation and suffering which will be brought upon his dependents in the
event of sickness, unemployment and old-age’, the prime minister said in
1925.^5 Unlike Britain’s scheme, Bruce’s subsequent 1928 legislation envisaged
benefits payable in relation to old age as well as sickness and disability. But his
bill failed under heavy opposition from Friendly Societies and the Labor Party,
and his government was defeated in 1929 (for unrelated matters). Labor was
adamant any additional government support would be payable by higher
income earners through general taxation, not via contributions from workers
themselves.
Conservative Australian interest in such schemes did not die with Bruce’s
government. President Roosevelt’s New Deal included old-age social security,
reinforcing the global trend towards contributory schemes.‘Experience in
Great Britain and in other countries over many years has proved that much
can be done towards solving the problems which confront the worker as a
result of ill-health, unemployment and old age by the institution of a system
(^5) http://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1925-stanley-bruce (accessed 20
November 2015).
We Must All Be Capitalists Now