Pauline Hanson gets own birthday wrong in bizarre superannuation debate

Pauline Hanson has misstated the date of her own birthday in parliament, causing confusion during a debate about the government’s proposed superannuation legislation.

The Senate on Thursday passed a trio of superannuation bills, which will block most underperforming funds from recruiting new members, and “staple” workers to one fund to prevent the creation of duplicate accounts.

The changes were passed with the backing of One Nation, despite the party failing to secure support for an amendment that sparked a bizarre debate about Hanson’s birthday.

Labor slammed One Nation for proposing to lift the concessional cap for extra super contributions to the age of 67.

Senator Murray Watt accused Hanson of giving herself a “nice little pay rise” as a “birthday present”. His comments came after the One Nation leader said she was “proud to say I am 67 years of age, and I turned 67 yesterday”.

“This is one of the biggest attempted rorts and swindles of the public purse that Australia has ever seen,” Watt told the Senate.

“Yesterday was Pauline’s payday – coming to Canberra to give herself a nice, sweet, fat pay rise that the battlers in Queensland are going to be paying more tax to fund.”

Hanson then accused Watt of misrepresentation and “telling a lie”, saying her birthday was “last month”. Debate was temporarily derailed by confusion over Hanson’s birthday before she clarified that it was not on Wednesday – it was in fact in May.

The One Nation leader’s parliamentary biography states that she was born on 27 May, 1954.

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Hanson defended herself against claims she was trying to score a pay rise, saying the concessional cap amendment had been intended to benefit “all Australians” who reached retirement age. She said she was “fed up with the lies and misrepresentation” of her motives by Watt.

Senator Malcolm Roberts said it was “vile and wrong” to say Hanson was attempting to enrich herself.

In the end, Hanson failed to move the amendment, after the superannuation minister, Jane Hume, revealed the Coalition would not support it.

The main bill – Your Future, Your Super – passed the lower house earlier in June after the Coalition removed a controversial power that would enable the minister to ban certain types of investments. The government then secured its passage in the Senate on Thursday, 34 votes to 30, after a deal with One Nation and Centre Alliance, and support only at the final stage from Jacqui Lambie.

The Coalition accepted two One Nation amendments to allow Australians who took out lump sums of up to $10,000 during Covid-19 to repay the money into their super account by 2030 without penalty, and ensure that people paying more than $25,000 into their superannuation will not be taxed an extra 3%.

The Senate also passed a Coalition amendment to delay the introduction of benchmarking tests and fund stapling until November.

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The Coalition successfully opposed a bid by independent senator, Rex Patrick, to extend benchmarking of funds to for-profit retail funds, despite it being backed by the Australian Industry Group and Australian Council of Trade Unions.

Hume told the Senate the underperformance test will apply to 90% of funds at first, but the government intends to extend it to retail funds in future.

Patrick also proposed that people in dangerous jobs should not be stapled to a fund that lacked proper insurance cover, but this was defeated.

Earlier the ACTU president, Michele O’Neil, said Patrick’s amendments would have represented a “a huge improvement to the bill”.

“This bill has been written to benefit the for-profit funds and their backers in the big banks,” she said. “This government should be focussing on protecting the retirement incomes of Australian workers, not funnelling more of this money into profit.”

Innes Willox, the chief executive of Ai Group, said the bill had rightly criticised as “taking super in a wrong direction to the detriment of the retirement incomes of millions of super fund members”.

The other two superannuation bills passed on Thursday enable people aged 65 and 66 to make up to three years of non-concessional contributions under the carry-forward rule, and increase the maximum number of allowable members from four to six in self-managed super funds and small Apra funds.