At first believed to have been left out of a group of bills Labor tried to push through via a guillotine motion on Thursday, the Better Targeted Superannuation Concessions Bill was included for a brief time before the motion suffered a defeat in Senate.
After tense negotiations between Labor, the Greens, and Senate independents, the government then scaled back its original agenda, cutting 36 bills down to a package of 27 pieces of legislation and excluding the controversial tax on super balances over $3 million.
As it currently stands, the bill has been scrapped having been considered too controversial and too hard to pass.
According to SMSFA CEO Peter Burgess this is “a big win for the sector”.
He told SMSF Adviser that this is a “sure sign” that the government knows they have issues with this bill.
“Only non-controversial bills are guillotined,” Burgess said.
According to the Parliamentary Practice and Procedure Guidelines, guillotines are used where the government can obtain the support of a majority of the Senate to provide finite debating times for a particular bill or to bring protracted debates to a close.
Earlier this week, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher assured that the changes to Division 296 remain Labor policy, but conceded that the bill faces opposition in the Senate, calling the upper house “an obstructionist chamber”.
“There’s a big cross bench with different views, we’ve got an opposition that doesn’t want to work with the government, that wants to stop progress, but we are going to be fighting right up to the end.”
A rare and most welcome victory for common sense in Canberra. However common sense is clearly in short supply in the Government, and we can expect the zealots like Gallagher, Chalmers and Jones, who clearly have no idea how to craft a financially responsible and sensible policy initiative, to resume their misguided campaign to pass this fatally flawed legislation next year. We can only hope the Cross-Benchers stay the course if the Government tries it on again next year, no doubt with some devious plan to sneak it through linked with legislation that has broader support. Then in May the electorate can send this weak excuse for a Government packing, and hopefully this imbecilic attack on self-funded retirees will never see the light of day again.
Thank you so much for the notification. Now we just have to wait to see what happens when parliament resumes. Surely common sense will prevail.
Treasury and Labor have got to understand that these flaws are not easy to brush over and need to be addressed if they insist on pursuing some sort of changes to the tax concessions (which considering that the top 10% pays over 46% of the tax revenue take, it is not unfair in the first place, that these people get back 40% of the total super concessions). It makes perfect sense to me, and that tax revenue also already pays for the old age pensions and care packages, whist the same 10% will be able to support themselves in retirement.
This policy is pure and simple greed and is apparently then being called out by the Senate as such.
Thank you to Peter and your tireless Team.