CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR RETIREMENT? With very little political cut-through since they celebrated the unsuccessful referendum result like they had just won a landslide election, the Liberals are back with some cool new ideas.
In an effort to help under 40s achieve housing security in the face of inflation and an out of control rental crisis, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg is proposing home borrowers be allowed to use their superannuation to help them into the market.
This comes off the back of the RBA’s 13 interest rate rises that started in the back-end of the Liberal’s ten year reign in government.
After burning through 3 different PMs over four different elections, each of whom offered no answers to the housing crisis they created to protect the interests of a grey army of conservative baby boomer voters, Senator Bragg is the only member of the Coalition opposition who has accepted the very real fact that their party is not attracting younger voters.
For this reason, he’s decided to trot out yet another variation of the low-effort ‘just use your super’ policy that saw millions of Australians drain their retirement funds to buy milk and bread in the early days of Morrison’s pandemic response.
Bragg said the Coalition’s super for housing policy for first home buyers should be extended to help existing owners with a mortgage.
It is not yet known if Bragg is just trying to get headlines or if he realises that these kinds of neoliberal solutions to the housing crisis is one of the main reasons the Liberals lost 6 blue-ribbon seats to the Teal Independents in 2022.
However, as a top of the ticket member of the upper house, Bragg doesn’t have to worry about facing the same fate as the ousted moderate Liberals – who were also big supporters of telling young people to burn through what little nest eggs they have to buy a property that cost Baby Boomers 1% of the current overvalued price.
With a political mandate to protect the manipulated assets of older Australians, it seems the Liberals are just going keep insisting that super isn’t as important for young people, right up until the next election, where the under 40s are expected to become the largest voting block.
