Why big super want to stop you using your savings on housing

The superannuation industry is very good at selling itself. It is, after all, marketing a compulsory product. They spend our money to tell us how good superannuation is.

Their general assumption is that people are too stupid to work out their lives themselves.

In the past few months, they have cheered along retrograde tax changes that make superannuation the investment vehicle of choice without any competition.

So the model of paternalism and arbitrage suits them. They are happy to support higher taxes on everything except superannuation.

Super Members Council of Australia chief executive Misha Schubert's opinion piece in this masthead on Wednesday is more evidence of their hunger to collect more super and more fees no matter the cost.

There are at least three problems with this approach.

First, they have ignored the central premise of my recent speeches on this topic: we are at risk of becoming a nation of retired renters.

They ignore housing altogether.

Despite pulling apart technical elements of the 2020 Retirement Income Review (RIR), they ignore its central finding.

The key takeaway is that housing is the key test of success in retirement. It said: "The home is the most important component of voluntary savings and is an important factor influencing retirement outcomes and how people feel about retirement."

The RIR made the priority crystal clear: "it is the service that owner-occupied housing provides that is most important, rather than the actual savings."

The 2026 Intergenerational Report made similar points.

It seems incredibly tin-eared that the mega-rich superannuation lobby can't be bothered to engage in the central issue of home ownership.

Surely they know that home ownership rates have tumbled as superannuation has grown like topsy.

When the Superannuation Guarantee was in its infancy in 2003, we had 6 per cent of retirees as renters.

Now we have at least 12 per cent, double that figure, and we are on track to see almost a million Australians retire without a home by 2032. They will be forced to rent in retirement.

This is a seismic shift from a system that started in 1992, assuming people would retire with a home they own outright.

Vanguard data backs this up: 71 per cent of baby boomers report they own their own home outright. But one in two Gen Z and just more than a third of millennials expect to retire with a mortgage.

Ignoring this reality is a callous and cold assessment from an industry that would rather own homes themselves and rent them out to retirees.

Their only policy suggestions revolve around getting more money to manage. We see no offering on how to help people address our new housing reality.

Thirty-two per cent of super lump sums were used to pay off mortgages in the last ABS data. This means people have been forced to pay high super fees and simultaneously high levels of interest costs. Who does this system serve?

In Jim Chalmers' economy, high inflation and high interest rates mean more expensive mortgages.

Any super suggestions here? Crickets.

Second: they want to count pension savings but have nothing to say about tax concessions.

Superannuation tax concessions as a share of GDP are now projected to overtake age pension spending in the late 2030s, sooner than the 2023 IGR, which had this happening in the 2040s.

Page 246 of the 2026 IGR states: "Superannuation tax concessions as a proportion of GDP are projected to increase from around 1.7 per cent in 2025-26 to 2.7 per cent in 2065-66, driven by earnings tax concessions. The value of revenue forgone from superannuation tax concessions is projected to overtake expenditure on the age pension in the late 2030s."

You can't look at the potential benefits without considering the costs and trade-offs. The costs to the budget are substantial and can't be ignored.

Third: perhaps the silliest part of their argument is the assertion of a superannuation monopoly on compounding.

Investing in super isn't the only way to get access to the magic of compounding. It can be achieved through investing in shares, ETFs, cryptocurrencies or even housing.

Ironically, the government has hit all these things with a 30 per cent minimum new tax (supported by big super), and it has gone out of its way to destroy negative gearing, which provided avenues for investment outside of super.

The housing supply impact is especially bad. The combination of the new capital gains tax and negative gearing regime reduces supply by 35,000.

That's fewer homes and a weaker overall non-super investment environment.

Australians are smart and better informed than ever before thanks to AI. The idea that the surge of retired renters can be totally ignored by the super industry and the Labor Party reveals their groupthink and commercial interests.

One million future retirees living in rentals is a large number of Australians. The debate to better calibrate the retirement and housing systems isn't going away.

Pretending it doesn't exist or ignoring these facts isn't the leadership Australia wants and deserves.

Andrew Bragg is a Liberal senator for NSW, and the opposition spokesman for environment, housing and homelessness.