Liberal’s credentials on advice reform to be tested under Taylor, Hume

As Angus Taylor emerged from the coalition party room on Friday morning after defeating Sussan Ley in a leadership ballot 34 votes to 17, the government was quick to launch attack ads labelling the Member for Hume as “a leftover” of the previous Morrison government, and “just another Liberal”.

The attacks could be seen as kicking a party when it’s down – the Coalition is at its lowest electoral ebb in living memory. Taylor is likely to be focused, in the short- to medium-term at least, on simply holding the Coalition together and re-establishing it as a viable force in politics, particularly in the face of rising competition from One Nation.

Given these priorities, and in the midst of an ongoing cost of living crisis, it’s unlikely superannuation will immediately top the policy to-do list.

But it’s clearly in the interests of the holders of 23.8 million industry, corporate and public sector super fund accounts – and another 1.2 million self-managed super fund account holders – that a strong, credible opposition hold the government to account on any proposed reforms to the $4.5 trillion industry.

It’s also critical than an effective opposition keep pushing for meaningful reform in the financial advice space. Before the last election the Coalition committed to significant reform within 100 days of winning power and “an ambitious target to rebuild the advice industry to 30,000 advisers” – as near as makes no difference to a doubling of the current number.

With the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes reforms initially slow to appear and now apparently stalled, it’s incumbent on the opposition to keep the pressure on Minister for Financial Services Daniel Mulino to ensure access to financial advice is made more affordable and more accessible.

While Taylor is a Rhodes scholar and holds a degree in economics, he simply did not impress in his stint as shadow treasurer under former opposition leader Peter Dutton. He ran afoul of the superannuation industry in 2024 when he appeared to suggest that the Coalition’s plans for superannuation closely resembled US-style 401k voluntary savings plans (comments that were subsequently walked back), and in aftermath of the dismal 2025 election result a former colleague said: “I don’t know what he’s been doing for three years.”

Immediately after winning the leadership on Friday, Taylor promised a “return to core Liberal values”, which include lower taxes and lower government spending, and immediately singled out environmental and immigration policies as areas for attention.

But in newly elected Coalition deputy leader, Victorian senator Jane Hume, the opposition has a proven superannuation warrior.  Hume was Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy when the Morrison government introduced its early access to super scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic, and subsequently described it as “an overwhelming success”.

The Coalition under Taylor and Hume may be tempted to revisit the issue of early access to neutralise the rising popularity (and populism) of One Nation, which has advocated allowing first homebuyers to access their super to buy a home. It has also suggested allowing individuals who withdrew funds during the Covid-19 early release scheme to recontribute that money without breaching contribution limits.

Hume also was front-and-centre for most of the Coalition government’s most substantive super reforms of the past decade, including the Your Future Your Super package – which included the performance test, stapling, the YourSuper comparison tool, and introduced the best financial interest duty – and earlier, when she was assistant minister for super, the Protecting Your Super package – which included a cap on fees for low-balance accounts, carving out members aged under 25 or with balances of less than $6000 from default insurance, and additional powers for the Australian Taxation Office to enable account consolidation.

As recently as September last Hume spoke passionately about the role of superannuation in Australians’ lives – and specifically for women – when she introduced a private members bill, the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Tackling the Gender Super Gap) Bill to address the growing superannuation gender gap.

She described it as “one of the most persistent and unfair challenges” in the system and her second reading speech highlighted a belief in the need for fairness and integrity in the superannuation system, and that where “systemic structural failures” exist, deliberate policy intervention is required to correct them.

Superannuation is a cross-portfolio issue, with responsibilities typically split between a superannuation minister and/or financial services minister, and the Treasurer of the day. At the time of writing it was still unclear what portfolio Hume would be given, except that it would not be Shadow Treasurer. But it was also not clear who would win that portfolio, with the most likely candidates of Tim Wilson and Ted O’Brien set to slug it out.

Wilson’s own track record on superannuation policy is instructive: he’s a clear advocate for allowing access to super for housing, as shown by the “housing first, super second” campaign run in mid-2021; and he chaired an inquiry into Labor’s proposed franking credits policy, which he described as a “retiree tax”.

Wilson argued in 2021 against raising the Superannuation Guarantee (then 10 per cent) and that the superannuation industry lacks a clearly defined purpose, with multiple objectives that sometimes contradict each other.