Treasury division head of retirement income policy Robert Jeremenko told the Senate committee on COVID-19 on Thursday that the government was now expecting $41.9 billion to be removed from the super system following the extension of the scheme to December and taking into account “lived experience” of the pandemic, which indicated consumers had taken up the scheme in higher numbers than expected.
“The early access measure was developed in early March and I don’t think anyone in Australia would have been able to predict what the impact of the pandemic was,” Mr Jeremenko said.
“What we had to do was use our best estimate, but the actual lived experience of those first three months up to 30 June was actually that we had $20.1 billion removed. So what we did was given the extra three months of actual numbers, assumed a certain take-up for the remaining three months plus the extension.”
Mr Jeremenko said as at 28 July, $31.9 billion had been withdrawn from super.
He added that Treasury could revise up the expected withdrawal numbers further depending on how many more consumers accessed the scheme.
“This six months we are in now, they are estimates. They are best estimates, but we will revise as we have done when we see actual numbers coming through and that will give us a real feel of the level of uptake,” he said.
It’s worth noting that the Fed Dept of Treasury employs 900 staff, costing taxpayers $140 million pa.
Can you imagine if an Adviser got their estimates/forecasts this wrong?
Give the young ones a crack at super access and gee I wonder what will happen
Interesting to see the percentage that has come from Industry Funds
not sure why this would be interesting. If Industry funds have a higher percentage wouldn’t this just show that those hardest hit by job losses and lack of work are in the hospitality and retail sector. These are the people that are most likely to be signed up with Industry funds.
Will be interesting how many of these withdrawals were legit vs it’s an easy way to grab some money from super so why not? The ATO will find out if it’s not legit and then that will be the next headline….