Senator ROBERT RAY(3.31 p.m.) —What we have seen here today is a complete attempt to mislead this Senate, firstly when Senator Short infers that the Labor Party will not be supporting the surcharge. No such conclusion could be drawn from any of the questions asked today. What we have asked is what the consequences of implementation will be.

The fact is that there are something like 15 million superannuation accounts floating around in this country. It is incumbent upon them, according to this government, to do all the necessary administration of searches and relations with the tax office in order to implement this so that the government does not pick up the cost.

Probably no more than a million at best of those 15 million accounts would be owned or in some ways connected to the 335,000 people who earn more than $85,000 a year in this country. What that means is that every one of those accounts has to be researched. A lot of them will not have tax file numbers because it was not compulsory. The enormous administrative cost of that, by law, is spread right across every policyholder, every superannuant—not just the rich. So, in effect, all those costs are borne equally, no matter what your income or what your superannuation is. That is a diminution of the rights of those particular people.

Senator Kemp —It is your law.

Senator ROBERT RAY —It is no use saying that it is our law. You have put the additional cost on without thinking about it. This is a government that shoots first and thinks afterwards. They want to go and soak the rich. Why not put an extra one per cent on income tax? It would raise the same revenue and have nothing like the same administrative burden.

When we point out that the latest change to over 55-year-olds will force a lot of those people to go and get new financial advice, what do we have? We have the junior senator from Tasmania coming in saying what a stupid question it was. That is good from him. If anyone is a few runs short of the follow-on it is Senator Abetz. But does he not understand the psychology of this age group?

With the complexity of superannuation laws, which this whole parliament is guilty of, if you like—I do not just throw that to the other side—it has become necessary for people in this particular age group to go and seek some financial guidance. They go to experts and most of these experts charge $150 an hour for their financial advice. I am advised that an average transaction takes 2½ hours, which would cost between $300 and $400 to seek this advice. A lot of them went and sought that advice six months or a year ago and paid that money then. What are they going to have to do now? They are going to have to go back and do exactly the same thing.

Just in case anyone thinks it is only the 67,000 people affected who are going to go through that particular process, it is a lot more. People will not know whether they are affected, so it is going to be a much bigger group that goes and gets this financial advice. At a minimum it is going to cost $20 million payout by these people overall, maybe up to $40 million. This is an awful lot of money that they have to spend in this particular regard.

Finally, of course, Senator Short had no idea about the cost to revenue and national savings of these people—I am not talking about the over 55s; I am talking about the people earning more than $85,000 a year—who transfer and rearrange their salary packages in the term of a loan to go into a negatively geared property that will not even attract fringe benefits tax and thereby diminish the amount of federal revenue.

It is well known that superannuation issues are complex—I concede that—but, really, when you are Assistant Treasurer and you have very little else to do, superannuation should be your go. It should be the one area he is able to master. Senator Short goes up to Queensland and what does he do? He takes all the questions on notice. `I'll take these on notice,' he says. `These are a bit too hard. I don't have Senator Watson backing me up,'—old squeaky there, who at least does know something about it. He takes the questions on notice and comes in here and goes up every byway he can without actually confronting the question. You are a minister. You should be able to answer on this particular question. On a more obscure macro-economic policy or tax law you are forgiven, but on a thing like superannuation you should be able to answer those questions. (Time expired)