Huge change to super that no Aussie wants as Peter Dutton is dealt a brutal blow to policy promise

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

Peter Dutton 's plan to allow first home buyers to access $50,000 from their super has proved unpopular with a new poll showing three-quarters of Australians opposed.
The Opposition Leader made accessing retirement savings a keynote announcement at the Liberal Party's campaign launch in south-west Sydney.
'We will allow Australians to access up to $50,000 of their super towards a deposit for their first home,' he said.
'Your super is your money – not the government's.'
But a new survey from housing welfare group Everybody's Home found 75.68 per cent were opposed to the idea of allowing Australians to withdraw super from compulsory employer contributions.
Report author Maiy Azize said the Liberal Party's policy would only worsen the housing affordability crisis by pushing up house prices.
'Critics argue that it will do little to ease housing stress, while risking long-term harm to retirement savings and pushing prices even higher in an already overheated market,' she said.
Economist Saul Eslake, the principal of Corinna Economic Advisory, told Daily Mail Australia the Liberal Party's plan to allow early access to super would simply push up property values.
'The idea that you can take up to 40 per cent of your superannuation savings - up to a maximum of $50,000 - and put that towards the purchase of a home, will inevitably result in people taking out bigger mortgages than they otherwise would,' he said.
'This will result in higher house prices, which will be to the benefit of those who already own homes and the disadvantage of those who don't.'
Everybody's Home found a similar sentiment among Aussies surveyed about the Liberal Party's early access to super policy, with three-quarters of respondents saying they were 'extremely concerned' or 'very concerned' about it.
'Many respondents indicated that the scheme would not solve the root causes of Australia's affordability crisis,' it said.
'Some suggested it would simply add more money into an already overheated market, driving up prices rather than easing them.
'It is not simply a matter of preserving super balances, but a broader recognition that housing affordability will not be fixed through individual withdrawals from retirement savings.'
The Opposition is also proposing to allow first home buyers to claim interest repayments on tax - on the first $650,000 of their mortgage for five years - provided it is a brand new property and they are owner-occupiers.
It will be available for individuals earning up to $175,000 and for couples on a joint income of $250,000 at the time they are approved for the tax deduction scheme.
The Opposition's housing spokesman Michael Sukkar argued this would help turn renters into home owners.
'We know there are a couple of really big challenges for first-home buyers - they can't service a mortgage and therefore they can't get finance; and the deposit hurdle is too high,' he told the ABC's Insiders program on Easter Sunday.
'Our plan is the only plan that seeks to address both and not by providing them a grant but by giving them some of their own tax back.
'Being able to put that on the repayments on their mortgage gets them through that difficult period and is ultimately going to convert Australians from renters into home owners.'
Labor also has policies for first home buyers, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announcing all property newcomers would be able to get a mortgage with a small, five per cent deposit instead of the usual 20 per cent equity.
Mr Eslake, a former federal president of the Young Liberals, said first home buyer grants have been inflating house prices since Australia's longest-serving prime minister Robert Menzies introduced the first scheme in 1964.
This was at the urging of future PM John Howard, who at the time was president of the NSW Young Liberals.
'We have 60 years of evidence that shows that anything that allows Australians to spend more on housing than they'd be able to results in more expensive housing and a small proportion of the population owning it,' he said.
'And this is just another example of the sort of policies that, far from solving the housing problems we've had a for a long time, have actually made them worse.'
The Everybody's Home survey wasn't a scientific poll, however, based on gathering a random sample of views.
The housing welfare lobby group admitted the 740 responses were drawn from 'supporters of the Everybody's Home campaign, meaning respondents were drawn from a sample that is already concerned about housing and housing affordability'.
Existing laws don't allow Australians to access compulsory employer contributions to super to buy a first home, with level rising from 11.5 per cent to 12 per cent on July 1.
But first home buyers can access their voluntary superannuation contributions to buy a first home under the First Home Super Saver Scheme.