Media Release

Get rid of the threshold – super should be for everyone

19 June 2017

Get rid of the threshold – super should be for everyone

There is currently a $450-a-month wage threshold for the Superannuation Guarantee (SG) and as a result, an estimated 220,000 Australian females and 145,000 males are missing out on around $125 million of superannuation contributions each year.

The SG amounts to 9.5 per cent of your salary that, by law, your employer has to pay into your super fund.

It should be part of your work related entitlements. Low income Australians need SG too, to help put them on the road to comfort in retirement.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) has lobbied previously for the removal of the $450 threshold, not least because it particularly affects women who often work in casual or part-time jobs for more than one employer at a time.

It also impacts young Australians in casual jobs. ASFA believes the current approach is delaying young people embarking on the super journey.

Having young people engaged in super saving as early as possible makes more sense than excluding them from a super start in their first job. Compounding of investment returns can turn small initial contributions into substantial amounts at retirement.

Casual and low paid workers in retail, hospitality and nursing are reportedly the hardest hit by being left out of super due to the threshold.

For a student aged 19 working part time for five years and earning $4,000 a year, missing out on SG means losing out on $1,900 in superannuation contributions.

For a woman aged 37 working part time due to family responsibilities and earning $5,000 a year, the loss over three years is $1,425. These are significant amounts.

ASFA CEO Dr Martin Fahy said removing the threshold would boost the retirement savings of many women as well as the young and it was about time for total equality with SG.

“When we are faced with glaring gaps in income and retirement equality for women in this country, any lever that can be pulled to help fix things should be pulled,” he said.

The majority of adult Australians have a superannuation account able to receive contributions.

Employers also now generally have automated processes to pay both salaries and superannuation contributions. It can be more work for employers to work out who is below the threshold.

“It’s also wrong to deprive part timers of what in effect is a part of the remuneration for the job they are doing,” Dr Fahy said.

“Employers do not top up the pay of those below the threshold for the missing super contributions.

“Removal of the threshold is a long overdue correction. As more and more people build portfolio careers around the gig economy, we need to move with the times and recalibrate SG to meet their needs.”

Regardless of whether you have a full time, part time or casual job, if you earn more than $450 (before tax) in a calendar month, your employer should currently pay super contributions for you.

“Everyone needs super,” Dr Fahy said.

“It’s time to level the field, give everyone the entitlement of super and strengthen the super system by removing any impediment to providing a fully universal means to build wealth.

“Australia’s $2.3 trillion super system is one of the top three retirement systems in the world.

“There is room to include everyone and we should be doing so as soon as possible.”

For further information, please contact:

Teresa Mullan, Media Manager, 0451 949 300.

About ASFA

ASFA is the peak policy, research and advocacy body for Australia’s superannuation industry. It is a not-for-profit, sector-neutral and non-party political, national organisation. ASFA’s mission is to continuously improve the superannuation system so people can live in retirement with increasing prosperity.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA

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Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

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Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

 

Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

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Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.