a review of australia’s compulsory superannuation scheme after.pdf

A REVIEW OF AUSTRALIA’S COMPULSORY SUPERANNUATION SCHEME AFTER A DECADE Dr Michael E. Drew ASIA School of Economics and Finance Queensland University of Technology Brisbane 4001 Australia ∗ Dr Jon D. Stanford FSIA School of Economics University of Queensland Queensland 4072 Australia Email: j.stanford@.au Tel: (07) 3365 6594 Fax: (07) 3365 7229 March 2003 Discussion Paper No 322 ISSN 1446-5523  M.E. Drew J Stanford This discussion paper should not be quoted or reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of the author. ∗ Corresponding Author. 2 1. INTRODUCTION The following review of Australia’s retirement savings system takes 1992 as the beginning of compulsory mass superannuation in Australia with the introduction of the Superannuation Guarantee (SG). Today, in 2002, the SG has reached its maximum levy of nine per cent of salary for most employees. While our review necessarily considers issues of national economic policy and of aggregation, our central concern is that of those individual members of a superannuation fund, and that of how such members can maximise their retirement