Pauline Hanson Wants to Let You Crack Open Your Super Early. Labor Says That's a Bad Idea.
Pauline Hanson wants Australia's superannuation rules loosened up, arguing workers should be able to tap their compulsory retirement savings in a crisis because, in her words, it's "their money" (The Guardian).
One Nation's push, aired across Sunrise, The Project and Hanson's own social media this week, would broaden early access to super so Australians struggling with mortgage repayments and cost-of-living pressures can draw on their balances before preservation age (the age at which you're legally allowed to access your super, currently between 55 and 60 depending on when you were born). Hanson has flagged early access for medical or disability diagnosis as one specific use case, and labelled the broader compulsory system "broken" (SBS News; The Guardian). The proposal sits within One Nation's $90 billion Budget Savings Plan, a policy document on the party's website aimed at cutting wasteful government spending and streamlining federal functions (One Nation).
Labor is drawing a hard line. Treasurer Jim Chalmers says Australians already have avenues to access super early on compassionate grounds or under severe financial hardship provisions (The Guardian). The party is vowing to defend the compulsory system against what it frames as an encroachment on the integrity of Australia's $4.4 trillion retirement savings pool (SBS News; The Australian).
Chalmers is on solid ground factually. The Australian Taxation Office currently lists five grounds for compassionate early release: medical treatment or transport, disability accommodation, palliative care for a terminal illness, funeral expenses for a dependant, and preventing foreclosure or forced sale of a home. Separately, individuals who have received an eligible income support payment for at least six consecutive months and have no other means of paying can withdraw up to $10,000 per year under the severe financial hardship provision (The Guardian).
What's striking is how much those existing pathways are already being used. In 2024-25, the ATO granted early super access to 63,300 individuals on compassionate grounds, the vast majority for medical treatment. More than $1.4 billion was withdrawn, at an average of roughly $22,400 per person. That's a 40% increase on 2023-24 and nearly double the $762 million accessed in 2022-23 (The Guardian).
The trajectory matters. Even under the current, comparatively restrictive rules, demand for compassionate early release is climbing sharply. Whether that's a sign the system is already flexible enough to meet genuine need, as the Treasurer implies, or evidence that cost-of-living pressure is forcing Australians into hardship withdrawals at growing rates, is the political fault line. Hanson's pitch is that the system is too rigid for people doing it tough. Labor's is that loosening the rules would hollow out retirement balances and shift a cost-of-living problem onto future retirees.
One Nation isn't the only opposition voice testing the water. Jane Hume, the deputy Liberal leader, confirmed the Coalition would revisit whether Australians should be able to access retirement savings early to buy a first home (The Guardian). That's a narrower proposition than Hanson's but points in the same direction: more reasons to crack open the nest egg before retirement.
The policy community isn't impressed. Bob Breunig, director of the ANU's tax and transfer policy institute, has rejected the push outright. "We shouldn't allow early release," he said (The Guardian). Investment experts warn that early withdrawal can substantially reduce final retirement balances, and suggest that if the goal is to put more money in workers' pockets now, reducing the superannuation guarantee contribution rate (the percentage of your salary your employer must pay into super, currently 12%) would be a less destructive mechanism than letting people drain their accounts (The Guardian).
There's an internal tension worth noting in Hanson's positioning. She has indicated support for the 0.5% increase to the superannuation guarantee that took effect in July 2021, consistent with her view that workers should have more money going into super. The flip side, that they should also have greater freedom to pull it back out, is where she diverges from the consensus that the super system's purpose is to keep people off the age pension in retirement (Facebook/One Nation).
The political stakes are real. Hanson's proposal may not survive contact with the Senate crossbench, let alone a Labor government that has made preserving the super system a defining position. But the Coalition's willingness to reopen the early-access-for-housing debate, combined with One Nation's broader push, means the government will be fighting on this front rather than resting on the status quo. When the ATO's own data shows compassionate withdrawals nearly doubling in two years and still climbing, the argument that the current rules are either adequate or sustainable is going to be tested hard.
