I see Bill Shorten is suggesting we use some of our trillions in collective super to fund infrastructure projects.

I remember saying in the 90's when super started that it should be a government run asset and to keep it from the hands of gamblers.

Apart from the obvious risk of trusting incompetent goverments, we would now in a position where we owned everything, collected all the tolls, fees etc and our seniors could be happily retired on decent incomes.

If only!

Butch you will never be happy. No matter what you do it will still be govt; debt. Isn’t that your bug bear. It is not free money.

Super is collecting 12 % interest. And you can borrow at 2 % So where is the cheapest money.

All we have to do is Borrow when the time comes to pay out super money to persons owing.

You can always use super to pay off debt, and spend super money on infrastructure and still be in debt. I don’t know how you are going to win. If you are spending someone else’s money you are creating debt.

You can’t take money paying 16 % interest and payback 2% interest. Not now anyway Abbott has gone and never to be seen again. An infiltrator of the worst kind.

You have to pay interest on labour and insurance as well while you are trying to recover money.

What about the futures fund, that has around 117 Billion dollars sitting there doing nothing but earning 15.7 % interest.

Super is subject to rise and fall as any stock is. What you do is Five years before you retire you shift it into a safe place at considerable less interest.

There is plus and minus in doing what Bill said. At the moment it is national wealth, spend it and it is tar and cement. Tar and cement only has a value as long as it remains in one piece and where it was supposed to be.

It takes decades for anything to pay its way and something’s never recover their full costs.

An interesting question Butch but how do you make that work. Give us your solution.

As soon as Labor sees a pile of money they want to spend it. As Doog said, it is presently getting interest at a a rate far greater than the rate the government can borrow at, so this is yet another moronic idea by Shorten.

I have never suggested we use super to pay down debt, but had the government managed super from day one we would own everything we sold and not have debt. The million dollar unknown was could our former governments have managed it.

Butcher

Where did you see where Bill was talking about super, in what paper. I can’t find anything being said .

You are lucky that super is there at all , if it was up to the coalition it would not exist.

Doog, he was being interviewed on sky news.

As for super, personally I'm opposed to it because we already have the highest wages going and super just amplifies that. It's time people learn to stand on their own two feet and if the government were to give tax incentives rather than the highly restricted ones that are in place, people could off set their incomes.

We are at a point now where approx 30% has to be added to the gross wage to cover all extras and that's 30% that consumers have to pay. Well it should be but in reality most small business owners wages have gone way backwards in real terms over the past ten years.

The other huge issue I have with it is the unpaid work that employers have to do to comply. While I accept that we have it, what I would like to see is for all super to be paid to a government fund, then employees can shift theirs where they like. Red tape is killing small business.