SMSF Association chief executive Peter Burgess, who has been in Canberra this morning to meet with crossbenchers regarding objections to the super tax bill, said the government has been heavily lobbying crossbenchers to try and get the bill passed.
The bill is scheduled to be tabled in the Senate on Thursday (6 February).
“It seems the government is looking to team the Better Targeted Superannuation bill with a measure that would reduce surcharges on credit card transactions,” Burgess told SMSF Adviser.
“It’s a populist measure that everyone wants to see get through and it is rumoured the government is going to force the crossbench to vote for the super bill if they want the surcharge measures to also be passed.”
In October, the government announced it would put in place measures to crack down on unfair and excessive card surcharges to help Australians and small businesses at the physical and online checkout.
It announced on 15 October 2024 $2.1 million of new funding for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to tackle excessive surcharges, with further work underway to reduce payment fees.
“The government is prepared to ban debit card surcharges, subject to further work by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and safeguards to ensure both small businesses and consumers can benefit from lower costs,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last year.
“We are prepared to ban debit card surcharging from 1 January 2026, subject to the consultation undertaken by the RBA, and sufficient steps and safeguards to ensure both small businesses and consumers can benefit from lower costs.”
Burgess said the government has indicated that if the crossbench does not vote for the superannuation bill as it now stands, the surcharge measures would not be implemented.
“The crossbenchers we have spoken with said they won’t support it, but there are a couple that we are concerned may vote with the government,” he said.
“As far as we know, Senator David Pocock will not vote for it and we are at this stage still confident that the crossbench won’t vote for it.”
He continued that it is disappointing that the government is taking this approach to try and push through the “deeply flawed” bill by pairing it with a populist measure.
“The government has backed the crossbench into a corner. If they don’t vote for the super tax bill, their constituents will miss out on the credit card surcharge measures and some cost-of-living relief.”
If there were in the financial advice space it would be called third line product forcing which is
strictly prohibited by the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010
Labor liars…always was, always will be.
So, unsurprisingly, it comes to this. An incompetent Government which can’t get sufficient support to ram through its fatally flawed legislation on its merits, using completely unrelated populist bribery to buy the votes it needs. Dishonest, deceitful and untrustworthy to the very end.
I hope the crossbenchers realise their credibility is on the line here. If they can be so easily corrupted into supporting legislation they know to be wrong and unfair, then what is the good of them?
As for this pissweak Government, the sooner it is gone, the better. I hope Australians see them for what they are – unfit for public office, and send them packing when the day for their electoral reckoning finally comes around. Smith has already jumped ship – it would be a happy day if the good citizens of Rankin did their fellow Australians the courtesy of removing their useless and dangerous elected representative.
This is typical back door stuff perfected by the Labor Party.
The Labor Party has proven time and time again ever since Gough Whitlam’s time that they are untrustworthy and demonstrate that lying to the electorate does not play on their conscience.
If people are worried about card surcharges, use cash as often as possible for the small every day purchases and BPay for large purchases.
A bit of budgeting and financial discipline goes a long way to helping save money.
Bring on the election so we can send this sleezy government on their merry way.
Banning surcharges on debit and credit cards will be a waste of time as vendors will put up prices to cover the cost of EFTPOS fees.
Thank you Peter and to your Team as well. Hopefully, the senators are prepared to tell the government to walk and expose these spin doctors for who they are. They have shown that they will lie their way through. And so it seems, they are prepared to bribe their way to get re-elected, so that they can look like heroes, instead of the liars that they are. How do we fight that! Hopefully, with integrity and steadfastness.
So, I see that the LYING Labor party is now trying to make self-funded retirees patsies in all of this – they want to take advantage of us and our success through hard-work and sacrifice, to steal from us, under the guise of it funding card surcharges.
We have nowhere to hide as they steal our hard-earned life’s savings and they want to make us the scapegoat as well as the senators that support us, who agree that the Division 296 is not only grossly unfair, it is unAustralian. And then they want to look like heroes for saving card charges that the government itself stole from all of us.
Oh, and then they’ll say that the Coalition is once again looking after wealthy people by them not supporting this. I live in Sydney and $3m is not considered wealthy when one considers that this was saved by me, to look after me, independently, for 30, with luck, up to 40 years – maybe in other cities and states, but not in Sydney.
Give me a break. These people have to go. They are spin doctors and will lie and cheat or do whatever they need to, to get elected again.
Once a liar, always a liar.