Australia's hard fought for super system is paying off for workers and the economy
26 October 2026
Wayne Swan opinion piece published in Australian Financial Review
It’s now four decades since construction workers built our most important economic structure - compulsory superannuation. They downed tools and took a hit to their pay packet that many never fully recovered.
But they instinctively understood something that has since guided our nation (and informed recent changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing.) Prosperity and equality of opportunity must move in tandem and reinforce each other. Only when equal weight is given to each do you let loose the powerful alchemy of a robust economy and a good society.
Super is the best expression of this. Before the Super Guarantee, almost all assets outside the family home were owned by the top ten per cent of households. Much of it belonged to the top one per cent. Compulsory super has spread those gains across the income distribution, from the bottom up.
Super Members Council research shows that over the past 20 years, super coverage among low and middle wealth retirees has more than doubled. For middle wealth retirees, super incomes have doubled in real terms, five times the growth seen by the wealthiest. Pension reliance among over-65s has fallen from 71 per cent to 53 per cent.
Ordinary working people now retire with meaningful wealth outside the family home. They use it to have a better standard of living.
Look at the alternatives. The Trump administration wants to emulate our system for its own workers, while its social security trust funds will be emptied within the decade. French students march in the streets while their government pays out 14 per cent of GDP on pensions. No one wants Australia to go down that road.
We will not have to. Spending on the age pension is set to fall from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 1.8 per cent in 40 years, even as the over-60s population doubles.
Everywhere you look, populism is on the rise. Leaders are portrayed as greedy and dishonest. Institutions are not to be trusted. Super is in the firing line, with proposals to let people raid their savings early. That sounds like a gift. It takes away the only realistic path to a dignified retirement for millions of Australians.
Preservation is the bedrock. It is why funds can invest for the long term in the large unlisted assets that deliver strong returns for members. Every time a politician treats super as a personal problem solver, that certainty erodes.
Australia has the strength to resist. Compared to other advanced economies Australia has the second fastest annual economic growth, with lower gross debt than every major advanced economy and unemployment below the G7 average. That economic and fiscal strength is built on institutions like super and it will last only if we keep building them.
The overhaul of capital gains tax and negative gearing belongs in the same story. Like super, it has faced bitter opposition, because big structural reform always does. In time it will be seen in a similar light. It promotes fiscal efficiency and a more efficient allocation of capital.
Ask who pays for the old arrangements. Few would argue the Commonwealth should borrow more to subsidise the losses of residential property investors. That is a strike against young people, who are locked out of the market by the very investors the subsidy rewards. It is also a strike against the efficient allocation of capital. Making our tax system fairer and more sustainable is how we give the next generation a fair go.
These principles of inclusive prosperity informed our past in super and our present in tax reform.
They must now inform our future, in the institutions we build around artificial intelligence.
The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has set out what that requires. AI’s spread through the economy must be built on regulation, so it is safe. It needs competition, so the gains are not appropriated by a few. And it needs political intervention, so we use the productivity uplift to prioritise the things we truly care about. That means health, education and a decent retirement.
Super did not arrive by accident. It arrived because workers were willing to give something up for people they would never meet. The same spirit should guide how we handle the next great change.
Workers deserve a bright future, and it is ours to build.
Wayne Swan is CBUS Super Chair and a former Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia