‘Like winning lotto': $300,000-a-year public servant pensions under fire in super tax battle

News.com.au

14 hours ago

Would a 90-year-old need a half-a-million-dollar per year pension to live on?
As debate swirls around Labor's controversial superannuation tax changes, critics have set their sights on lucrative taxpayer-funded lifetime pensions paid to former high-ranking public servants and politicians which can stretch into hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Politicians who entered parliament before the October 2004 election, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Sussan Ley, are still accruing benefits under the Public Sector Superannuation Scheme (PSS), a defined benefit scheme which pays out an annual pension — indexed to inflation and calculated by a formula including the member's average salary and years of service — when the member leaves office or retires at 55.
'It's like winning lotto,' said veteran fund manager John Abernethy, founder and chairman of Clime Investment Management.
'These guys are giving themselves lotto wins and then complain about paying tax on the income.'
Treasurer Jim Chalmers' proposed tax changes, known as Division 296, would double the rate from 15 per cent to 30 per cent for superannuation balances over $3 million and, most controversially, include unrealised gains on earnings on assets held by funds such as shares, farms and property.
Labor first announced the crackdown on tax concessions for very large super balances in 2023, but the legislation was blocked by the previous Senate. The changes look likely to become law as a deal with the Greens looms.
Only around 80,000 Australians, or 0.5 per cent of the population, currently have super balances above $3 million, but industry groups have warned that if the threshold is not indexed to inflation it could eventually capture the majority of Gen Zs entering the workforce today.
The measure is expected to initially claw back $2.7 billion a year and nearly $40 billion over a decade.
'What we need to do is make sure that our superannuation system is fair,' Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this week. 'That is what we are setting out to do.'
Division 296 will also be applied to defined benefit pensions to ensure 'commensurate treatment' as high-balance super funds — although unlike super account holders, those eligible will be able to defer the payments until they retire.
Interest will be charged annually on the deferred tax liability at the 10-year bond rate, currently at around 4.5 per cent.
Treasury estimates that 10,000 members with defined benefit interests will be impacted by the new tax in 2025-26, 'representing approximately 1 per cent of the total population with DB interests'.
The Australian Council for Public Sector Retiree Organisations (ACPSRO), which represents more than 700,000 retired public servants, has flagged a possible challenge to the new law, arguing it's unfair.
ASCPRO notes that unfunded pensions, which do not receive the 'generous and open-ended taxation concessions' available under regular superannuation, are already subject to normal income tax.
Recipients who will be captured by the $3 million threshold are already paying a marginal tax rate of 45 per cent on that income, and Division 296 will likely take their marginal tax rate to 60 per cent, according to ASCPRO.
'I'm not stepping away from the fact that these are very wealthy people at the top of the public service — either retired High Court judges, Commonwealth department secretaries, deputy secretaries — it's a very small percentage but it's the principle of the thing,' said ASCPRO president John Pauley.
'Nowhere has the government explained to defined benefit pensioners how they're benefiting from tax concessions at present and therefore why it's fair, just and equitable for this additional tax impost to be paid on top of the tax they're already paying.'
A person in an accumulation scheme who would be affected by the tax has the option of moving their assets out of super into another tax-effective vehicle such as a family trust, Mr Pauley argues, whereas those receiving defined benefit pensions have no such option.
'You're at the mercy of the government of the day,' he said.
ASCPRO also takes issue with deferred interest being slugged on future pension payments.
'There is zero asset sitting behind these schemes — if you're unfortunate enough to get run over by a car two years into your pension there is nothing there [to leave to beneficiaries],' Mr Pauley said.
'This is the ultimate self-licking ice cream for the government. They are wanting to make people pay tax, not on unrealised capital gains, they're wanting people to pay tax on a hypothetical gain on an asset which doesn't exist, either during the accumulation phase or during the pension.'
Mr Pauley estimated that for the roughly one million households receiving defined benefit pensions, the average was only in the range of $50,000.
'Teachers, nurses, police officers, members of the Defence Force, the bureaucrats who do the day-to-day work of government,' he said.
'Yes there's a few who are on very high incomes who have access to a defined benefit pension, [but] this wasn't something that is optional for them. When you signed up to work with the public sector it was a part of your workplace contract.'
Mr Abernethy, however, argues any overhaul of super concessions should also include going back to the drawing board on the $166 billion unfunded liability 'black hole', which has continued to blow out beyond forecasts as existing members continue to accrue benefits prior to retirement.
'Just pay out the bloody benefits today and cap it at $3 million, if the government is saying $3 million is more than you should have in super,' he said.
'How about we have a come-to-God moment and say, 'If your net present value of your future pension is $10 million, I'm sorry, $3 million is more than enough. It's a windfall, guys, now you've got to look after yourself.' It would save the taxpayer a fortune.'
He added that '[if someone says] that requires a complete renegotiation of what people thought they were entitled to — yes it does, come in spinner!'
'That's exactly what you're doing in super,' he said. 'Current taxpayers weren't even alive when these pensions were set. We've got $240 billion in the Future Fund, if that's not enough to clean out this liability and get rid of it then we better know now.'
He suggested complaints about paying additional tax on defined benefit pensions were an apples-to-oranges comparison.
'Imagine I come up to you on the street, I don't know who you are, and promise to pay you $100 a year indexed for the rest of your life,' he said.
'Then in five years I say, 'Look, mate, I'm only going to give you $90.' Am I going to get angry? I didn't contribute to it, you're just taking $10 off my cashflow.'
Mr Abernethy, in an op-ed last month, outlined what he saw as the 'diabolical issues' with defined benefits.
He cited the example of a high-profile former politician, senior ADF officer or High Court judge in their early 70s who receives a $300,000 defined benefit pension this year.
Assuming 3 per cent indexation, Mr Abernethy pointed out that at 75 years old the pension rises to $327,000, at 80 it rises to $380,000, at 85 it rises to $440,000, at 90 it rises to $510,000 and at 95 it reaches $590,000.
'Think about the numbers and you see that over the 10 years to 85, the pension receipts aggregate to about $4 million, and over the 10 years to 95 it aggregates to over $5 million,' he wrote.
'Would a 90-year-old need $510,000 a year to live on? Therefore, is it likely that these funds would flow from the beneficiary to others in a type of living estate? Is that what defined benefit pensions designed to do and are they consistent with Australia's superannuation policy?'
Defined benefit schemes were phased out after former Treasurer Peter Costello realised the payments would explode the budget bottom line in future years if not closed off.
The PSS has been closed to new members since 2005, while the earlier Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme (CSS) was closed in 1990. The CSS is a hybrid accumulation-defined benefit scheme, with some benefits linked to final salary and others based on an accumulation of contributions with investment earnings.
For military personnel, the defined benefit schemes are the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Scheme, the Defence Forces Retirement Benefits Scheme and the Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme (MSBS). Following the closure of the MSBS in 2016, all defined benefit military schemes are now closed to new members.
The schemes are unfunded or partially funded, meaning the payments come directly from tax revenue, to the tune of about $20 billion a year.
In 2006, the government established the Future Fund with an initial contribution of $60.5 billion that included the proceeds from the sale of Telstra.
The Future Fund was originally supposed to start paying out pensions in 2020 to take the burden off the taxpayer, but successive governments have delayed drawing from the fund.
In November, Labor ruled out taking a dividend from the fund until at least 2032-33, when the savings pool is expected to have reached $380 billion.
The announcement came as the Treasurer directed the Future Fund to prioritise investments in renewable energy, housing and infrastructure, sparking warnings that he was politicising the independently managed sovereign wealth fund.
Former Labor Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, who was appointed chair of Future Fund by Dr Chalmers in January 2024, said the decision to defer withdrawals 'provides the Future Fund with the confidence to provide more focus and resources to the areas of national priority identified in the new investment mandate that align with our risk and return hurdle'.
In an op-ed for The Australian Financial Review, Mr Combet said 'as of today, the value of the Future Fund covers about 79 per cent of the estimated APS superannuation liabilities' — suggesting the liability had grown to about $290 billion.
The Future Fund was valued at $237.9 billion as at December 31.
The most recent federal budget estimates liabilities for civilian superannuation schemes, including the CSS and PSS as well as pensions for judges, at $166 billion in 2024-25, rising to $179 billion by 2028-29.
Including military superannuation schemes, the total figure was $303 billion in 2024-25 and $341 billion by 2028-29.
Treasury's PSS and CSS Long Term Cost Report, published last year, forecast that the unfunded liability for the schemes would peak at $190.5 billion in 2033-34 before declining to $62.4 billion by 2060.
As of June 30, 2023, there were a total of 100,574 CSS members, including 1333 still currently employed, and 214,793 PSS members, 54,870 still employed.
'People who are in public service are entitled to a payout, but that payout should have been calculated and created with a logical and fair mechanism,' Mr Abernethy said.
'Saying to someone you get paid your pension based on your average wage when you leave, you tell us when you want to get it … that's not fair. You create these different tiers of benefits. Society's got to sit back and say, what's fair and what's affordable? Everyone's trying to get at fairness in the super system, but there's only so much money in the pot.'