On 3 February 2020, KPMG lodged a submission to the Retirement Income Review Panel in response to the release of the Retirement Income Review Consultation Paper (November 2019). In our submission, KPMG highlighted the issue of gender imbalance in the Australian workforce and current superannuation system, and put forward recommendations that would help redress this balance.

In making this submission KPMG has drawn on its previous modelling, focusing on the disadvantages faced by women in Australia – that is on gender equity and fairness.

Women comprise just over half of Australia’s population, but earn on average $26,000 a year less than men, face strong work discrimination and receive superannuation payouts around half those of men.

Our submission makes recommendations for changes to improve the retirement outcomes for women, noting that these would also impact men in similar situations.

In summary we made the following recommendations:

• Eliminate the $450 per month exemption: Helping low-wage earners save for retirement.
• Provide super contributions for paid parental leave.
• Provide Top-up Super for primary carers (not on a co-contribution basis).
• Provide super contributions for those 50 to 59 receiving Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
• Amend the Sex Discrimination Act to ensure employers who pay additional amounts to those who have taken on additional burdens of primary care are not in breach of the Act.
• Amend the concession caps for primary care and care-based work-breaks/Replace Contribution cap system with lifetime concessional contribution caps.
• Eliminate the Commonwealth child care subsidy’s ('CCS') per‑child cap that comes into play at family income of $188,163 per annum.
• Replace the CCS’s termination at family income of $352,453, with a phase‑down rate of 1 percentage point for every $3,000 of extra annual income earned.