Super bill passes through Senate

The Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System Bill has passed both houses of Parliament.

At around 8pm yesterday the bill passed the Senate with a vote of 33 for and 22 against.

Peter Burgess, SMSF Association CEO, told SMSF Adviser time will now tell how much revenue the new Division 296 tax will actually collect versus the cost of its implementation.

After being passed through the House of Representatives late last week, the bill was put before the Senate early yesterday morning under a guillotine motion from the Greens.

Guillotine motions are used to put a time limit on the debate if a majority of the senate agrees. It’s used to put an end to protracted debates.

Debate was initially adjourned at 1.30pm yesterday and resumed at around 7pm.

With the support of the Greens, the debate was more a formality, however, several Coalition members voiced their opposition to the legislation.

Senator Jane Humes, deputy leader of the Opposition, said it was a day “that Australians never thought was going to happen”.

“Prior to the 2022 election, Australians were told very clearly and very unambiguously that there would be no changes to superannuation under a Labor government. Yet here we are not just changing superannuation but truncating debate on those changes to superannuation too,” Hume said.

“We had a whole series of questions that we wanted to have asked the government about this legislation—questions about the treatment of your superannuation, your retirement savings, your nest egg—and you deserve to know that. Australians deserve to know the answers, but thanks to Labor and the Greens we will now never know the answers to those questions.”

Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler reiterated that this tax was never put to the Australian people.

“At the last election, Australians weren’t asked whether they supported a new tax on their superannuation balances structured in this way. They weren’t asked whether they supported a new regime under Division 296. They weren’t asked whether they supported a new threshold tax on retirement savings,” she said.

“This proposal was not part of the platform put before voters. That matters, because major structural tax changes in Australia should be grounded in a democratic mandate.

“When governments introduce sweeping changes to the tax system, particularly changes that affect long-term retirement savings, as any change in relation to superannuation does, the expectation should rightly be that those changes are clearly explained to the Australian people before an election—not quietly introduced afterwards”

She continued that superannuation “isn’t a short-term policy lever”.

“People make financial decisions based on the expectation that the rules governing their retirement savings will not be rewritten without warning, and plenty of young Australians I speak to are rightly concerned about that,” she added.

“Once governments establish the precedent that they can introduce new taxes on superannuation without seeking a mandate from the Australian people, the door is open for future governments to go further.”

WA senator Dean Smith said once the principle is accepted that super balances can be taxed more heavily whenever fiscal pressure emerges, the stability of the whole system is weakened.

“The revised legislation removes the earlier effective death exemption and raises questions about how inherited super balances and total and permanent disability payments interact with these new thresholds,” Smith said.

“These are structural risks, but also very human problems. For surviving spouses, they rely on superannuation balances to maintain stability after the loss of their partner. There is the potential for additional tax complexity and reduced security at a time when they are least positioned to cope with it.

“There are those Australians who, through no fault of their own, are no longer able to work. Superannuation is a lifeline, but more so for many of this cohort than anybody else in our community. Policy in this area must be approached with care and any legislative change resulting in greater volatility and complication and less predictability will have meaningful.

“It’s important that we view this bill as the beginning of Labor’s approach to superannuation, rather than the end to it.”

Independent senator David Pocock repeated his remarks from earlier in the session that it was “incredibly disappointing that this bill has been guillotined”.

“The government has spent weeks throwing sand in the gears with pointless amendments and reading out full amendments in motions going through government business time, slowing the Senate down, preventing us from actually debating legislation,” Pocock said.

“And when you do actually bring a bill, which I think is very important, you then do a deal with the Greens to guillotine it, despite having the support for this bill to pass. And I think this is a real low point in terms of accountability to have a bill that didn’t go to inquiry, then get guillotined and I think the Australian people deserve better.”

Keeli Cambourne

March 11 2026

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