Governments around the world are currently creating vast quantities of money ‘out of thin air’ to fund their emergency responses to the coronavirus pandemic. As this happens, we can safely disregard scaremongering about a ‘crippling burden of debt’ supposedly being left to our children. The truth is, this money never has to be paid back and can cost us basically nothing. Crucially, this can also be the case for money created to fund anything else we choose to prioritise in the future, such as de-carbonising our economy.

The Australian Labor Party is proud of introducing national compulsory superannuation, and it should be proud of aiming to provide workers with a comfortable retirement by ensuring retirement planning is part of workers rights. However, there are two significant problems with superannuation that do not align with core Labor values and call into question the system’s continuing existence.