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Twelve million Aussie workers set to see their retirement savings surge in matter of weeks as new changes come into effect

Twelve million Aussie workers set to see their retirement savings surge in matter of weeks as new changes come into effect

Sky News AU18 hours ago

Over 12 million Australian workers are weeks away from receiving a significant cash boost to their retirement savings.
From July 1 major changes to superannuation will kick in, with employers required to pay super contributions of 12 per cent of a workers annual earnings.
This is up from the current rate of 11.5 per cent required by law.
The hike will serve as the fifth and final in a series of boosts that were first introduced in 2021 in order for Aussies to meet the basic needs for retirement.
New research from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia found that with the changes factored in, a 30-year-old with a super balance of $30,000 today who earns a median wage of $75,000 is forecast to accumulate a super balance of $610,000 upon reaching 67 years of age.
This is due to due the fact that employees entering the workforce today will receive higher superannuation contributions for a longer amount of time than those who preceded them.
The Super Members Council revealed that the vast majority of Australia's 12 million workers are not aware about the imminent changes, and that the government and superannuation funds needed to do a better of job of informing the public.
SMC Chief executive Misha Schubert said, 'this increase to people's super is a powerful step forward for Australians' financial futures' and added 'too many people don't yet know it's happening."
A person earning $60,000 will see their superannuation payments increase from $6,900 to $7,200, while those earning $150,000 will receive $18,000 up from $17,250.
Those earning $200,000 a year will see $24,000 enter their super accounts up from $23,000.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the average yearly salary of a full-time Australian worker is $100,000.
The staggered increase to super payments was pursued to give businesses ample time to adjust to the changes.
The current median super balance for 60 to 64-year-old men is $205,000, while women in the same age bracket hold only $154,000 in their accounts.
However, the changes aren't all good news, with workers receiving super within their salary set to receive a reduction in their pay to compensate for the increase.
Those who salary sacrifice into their super accounts will also be at a disadvantage, and will be slugged additional taxes and levies if they breach the $30,000 concessional contributions cap.
ASFA states that for a someone to experience a comfortable retirement at least $595,000 in superannuation is needed, while a couple needs $690,000.

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Nuclear Science expert Dr Adi Paterson criticises Labor's current energy policy and targets for zero carbon renewables amid soaring power bills
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Sky News AU

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  • Sky News AU

Nuclear Science expert Dr Adi Paterson criticises Labor's current energy policy and targets for zero carbon renewables amid soaring power bills

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Sydney Morning Herald

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To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies

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To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies
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The Age

time2 hours ago

  • The Age

To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies

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Albanese is not going to plead. The Coalition is still demanding that the prime minister insist on an urgent meeting with Trump at any cost. Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor on Thursday said that Albanese must do 'whatever is necessary to meet with President Trump … as quickly as possible'. Maybe the opposition hasn't quite adjusted to the quiet patriotism that Australians feel about this. The country wants its leader to be on his feet dealing with Trump, not his knees. Or maybe the Liberals do get it, and they're trying to set Albanese up to fail. Loading In a poll published this week, non-partisan Pew Research found that, among 24 nations, Australia was one of the countries with the greatest distrust of Trump. Seventy-seven per cent of Aussies said they did not trust Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. This was identical with sentiment in Canada, yet Trump hasn't breathed a word about annexing Australia. The median distrust rating across all 24 countries was around six in 10. Australians have firm views about the US president. We will not reward a lickspittle leader. Does that mean we want to dump the AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain? From the news coverage this week of Trump's decision to review the deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's deeply unpopular. But a separate poll this week revealed that the opposite is true. The Lowy Institute survey poll found that 67 per cent of Australians support acquiring US nuclear-powered submarines, the first and most contentious element of the AUKUS pact. The poll of over 2100 people was conducted in March. When it was first announced, Lowy's poll found support at 70 per cent. 'Over the past four years, the Lowy Institute poll has shown that Australians' support for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines remains strong,' said Lowy's director, Michael Fullilove. The strident anti-AUKUS campaign led by Paul Keating and the Greens has made no real impact. The Australian electorate is discerning enough to judge Australia's national interests. And to tell the difference between distrust of Donald Trump on the one hand, and, on the other, an agreement between Australia and the country that Trump leads temporarily in order to acquire a national asset. (With Britain, of course, the third participant.) Australians have firm views about AUKUS. We will not reward a sellout leader. Which leads us to a key point largely overlooked in the week's frenzied coverage. America is not the point of AUKUS. The reason it exists is not out of love for the US. Or Britain. It came into being because of mutual fear of China. Beijing has built the world's biggest navy so that it can drive the US out of the Western Pacific and dominate the region. If it dominates Asia and the Pacific, it dominates the majority of the global economy. Which ultimately means it dominates the world. If you don't understand this, you haven't been listening to Xi Jinping. Or taking him seriously. Loading Australians understand the country's vulnerability. For years now, seven respondents in 10 have told Lowy's pollsters that they think China will pose a future military threat to Australia. The experts agree. The doyen of Australian defence strategy, Paul Dibb, says that Australia's navy and air force would not last a week in a confrontation with China. 'A few days' is all it would take for the People's Liberation Army to destroy Australia's forces. Not that Beijing wants to invade the continent. Australian strategists believe that China can more effectively and efficiently coerce the country by merely deploying some of the 300-plus vessels in its navy to Australia's northern approaches. Extended live fire drills, for example, would deter commercial shipping. Australia's supply lines, imports and exports, would be interrupted. The broad concept – cutting Australia off from the US and the world – is the same one that Imperial Japan was putting in place in World War II. Loading Knowing this vulnerability, an intelligent island continent would put a high priority on submarines to patrol our approaches. Unfortunately, successive Australian governments proved more complacent than intelligent. The six Collins Class submarines were supposed to be entering retirement about now. Which brings us to the second key point overlooked in the week's sound and fury. Journalists asked Defence Minister Richard Marles what would happen if the Trump administration review were to terminate AUKUS. What, they asked, reasonably enough, is Australia's Plan B? He answered that there was a plan, and we had to make it work. More pungently, Jennifer Parker of ANU's National Security College wrote in this masthead: 'Calls for a plan B overlook a blunt reality: AUKUS is already Plan C.' Remember Tony Abbott's Japanese subs and Malcolm Turnbull's French subs? Australia is becoming a byword for fecklessness. China's shipyards are producing two nuclear-powered submarines a year. Australia hasn't produced a single submarine since 2001. It's entirely possible that the Pentagon's AUKUS review, led by Elbridge Colby, complicates the plan. But an Australian with deep and long experience of dealing with Washington predicts that it will not scrap the three-nation treaty: 'I don't think he will recommend kyboshing the AUKUS agreement because, if he did, he'd be effectively ending the alliance. Not formally, but it would fundamentally change the equation.' Either way, with or without AUKUS, Australia's priority should be to prepare itself to stand on its own. AUKUS was supposed to add a serious new capability but not to be the be-all and end-all of Australian defence. 'Things have dramatically changed,' Paul Dibb tells me. 'With the Chinese navy on our doorstep doing live fire drills and the unreliability of our great ally, we now need to do much more to develop the independent capability to deal with contingencies in the South Pacific and relevant contingencies in the South China Sea, events where the US would have no interest in getting involved.' Australia needs to be able to stand on its feet, not its knees, in dealing with its ally. It needs to be able to do the same with its rivals.

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