Comment

Wayne Swan
How super strengthens Australian democracy

Before I was a politician, I was a day labourer. For many of my older co-workers, after four decades on a building site, the pension was hardly something to look forward to.

The superannuation savings workers have today came about because unions went on strike for it. And they won – $11 a week: $9 for super, a dollar for administration and a dollar for insurance.

Many older workers lost more on strike than they could ever have hoped to receive through super – but they did it anyway because they knew that they were creating something bigger.

Without their fight and sacrifice, there would have been no superannuation guarantee in 1992. No compulsion, no universality and most likely no preservation.

From $11 a week to a system worth more than $4.1 trillion.

The importance of super is far wider than we commonly think, however. It gives people a stake in the country, a stake in its future, and a reason to support the things that make our nation one of the best in the world.

One of the many tasks of my job now as the chair of a large industry fund is to keep a broad perspective on how the world is faring.

I must maintain an eagle eye on what happens in the national and international political economies because it has a very direct impact on what happens to our members’ retirement savings. Recently, I travelled to the United Kingdom and met social democratic leaders from Britain, Canada and Scandinavia.

We certainly live in interesting times.

If some of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were to reappear tomorrow morning and read the newspapers, they might think little had changed from when they were young – when authoritarians were in power and the world was sliding into division and conflict.

My own dad would probably have that reaction, having spent some of his youth fighting for his country. My grandad too, who suffered terribly on the Western Front during World War I and died young from the injuries he sustained.

Concern about the spread of extremism is very, very real. Here in Australia we are holding our democracy and our national consensus together. I don’t think Australia has ever stood higher on the world stage than now, as evidenced by the reception our prime minister received last month in the UK.

We have our share of extremists but our economy and society and political system stand strong.

Why is this?

Britain and much of Europe have endured a decade and a half of flat economic growth, austerity and widening inequality. But we have achieved strong economic growth that has been spread far more equally than elsewhere.

In most countries the gap between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 10 per cent of incomes had been widening.

In Australia it has been narrowing. We are all better off, not just the top earners. Looking at earnings after tax and after government payments over the decade to 2020, income growth in real terms was strongest for the bottom 10 per cent of household distribution, and weakest for those in the top 10 per cent.

Abroad, support for people peddling grievance politics springs from a simple fact. Many working people have been left behind.

Here we have avoided it and the reason is pretty simple. Our economy is delivering for the majority.

Inflation is down. Three years ago it was 7.8 per cent. Today it’s back within the 2 to 3 per cent band targeted by the Reserve Bank.

Unemployment is low. Currently it’s about 4 per cent and participation in the job market is high. Unemployment has crept up slightly, but it is well below what it was before Covid. More than a million jobs have been created since May 2022.

We have never seen a bigger fall in inflation with such a small effect on unemployment.

Australia has done what many economists said couldn’t be done: we have broken the back of inflation without scorching the livelihoods of working people. That’s a profound achievement.

All this, while our economy continues expanding.

Since 1991, the UK economy has grown by 87 per cent. The US economy by 132 per cent. And the Australian economy by 165 per cent.

Australia’s performance through the global financial crisis and beyond the pandemic was, on the whole, outstanding. It included the longest uninterrupted upswing in our history, and the longest in the developed world over that period.

Importantly, that growth has been more fairly shared in Australia than in other developed countries over a very long period of time.

Average income growth for the bottom 90 per cent of earners in many advanced economies has stalled over recent decades. This has not been the case for Australia.

So, while the global economy is volatile at present, we have a right to be optimistic about the economic outlook.

We have a productivity challenge, but business investment in Australia is strong. It has increased faster than GDP as a whole and on the most recent numbers business investment is up one fifth compared with where it was just before Covid hit.

And the federal government’s Future Made in Australia policy is providing critical support to key industries that are building up our sovereign manufacturing capability.

A big part of our success in creating a bigger economic pie and sharing it fairly is our system of compulsory superannuation.

Our industry funds exist for one reason, and one reason only: to give workers a better retirement.

These pooled retirement savings have enabled Australia to rebuild, retool and modernise. By investing to maximise member returns, we lift national productivity and expand Australia’s future wealth.

The fund I chair, Cbus, holds stakes in 29 of Australia’s 30 largest manufacturers – companies generating $64 billion in revenue and employing 48,000 Australians. Ten of these are Victorian companies alone, creating $30 billion in revenue and 17,000 jobs.

Nationally, the sums invested in super are impressive – $4.1 trillion from an economy with a nominal GDP of $2.2 trillion.

Our pension system is third in the OECD by size, despite Australia being 14th in the OECD on population.

If our super system were a country, it would be the eighth largest economy, above Italy and just below France.

We must keep it strong and we must keep it working for the benefit of millions of members by maintaining the uniquely democratic features of industry funds.

Our egalitarian, cooperative philosophy is an extraordinary asset. And the Australian Workers’ Union has been pivotal to making this a defining national value.

So much so, it is embedded in the structure of our superannuation system – run jointly by employers and unions, based on the principle of all benefits accruing to members and only to members.

Importantly, it has also contributed to more democratic control of capital and a more even spread of wealth than in most places on Earth.

The Keating government introduced the Superannuation Guarantee in 1992. About that time, the wealthiest 10 per cent of Australians owned almost all the shares and gained almost all the income from them. And the top 1 per cent owned much of that. The lowest-earning 30 per cent of people owned nothing but their house and their bank account, and the lowest 10 per cent didn’t own a house. They retired on the pension.

Over the following decades we have seen the lowest 30 per cent of income earners gather a good proportion of the nation’s capital collectively through their super accounts. Economic growth now flows to workers, not just inheritors of family wealth. People in the bottom and the middle, not just those at the top.

That really is something for all of us to be proud of.

It means members of Cbus and every other super fund have a stake in Australia’s national economic success. Their lives are less precarious than before. It’s the greatest antidote there is against political extremism and instability.

It’s good for their personal prosperity, for our economy, for our society and for our democracy.

We have a responsibility to protect, extend and improve this superannuation system. And we are as glad as anyone that it is strongly and diligently regulated in the national interest.

We continue to support the foundational ideas of industry superannuation: strong member representation on boards alongside employers; low fees; a strong presence in the workplace; products suited to the particular needs of building industry workers; and an emphasis on profits for members only.

We’re ensuring our economy delivers for everyone. And this is more than just rhetoric. Late last month, Australia was one of only nine nations to be rated triple A by all three ratings agencies when S&P Global Ratings reaffirmed our good standing.

Good economics twinned with strong social policy is absolutely imperative. History shows that in the absence of a fair go for working people, trouble follows.

And not just history. We can see it happening before our eyes right now.

It’s my belief that by doing what we are doing, we are not just ensuring Australia comes through these dangerous times in good shape, but that we can set an example for other nations about how to succeed.

They’re definitely listening.

This is an edited extract of Wayne Swan’s speech to the Victorian delegates conference of the Australian Workers’ Union on October 8, 2025.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 11, 2025 as "Our savings, our democracy".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

Send this article to a friend for free.