PAUL KEATING, a former prime minister of Australia, calls the country’s superannuation system “the envy of the developed economies”. In many ways, it is. The “super”, as Aussies call their private-pension provision, was a crowning achievement of Mr Keating’s premiership. In 1992 he made it compulsory for employers to set aside 3% of all but the very lowest-income workers’ wages. The payment has since crept up to 9.5%, and, by law, will rise further in 2021.
Today 15m working Australians are sitting on a nest-egg for retirement. With assets of about A$ 2.6trn ($ 1.9trn), their private-pension pot has grown into one of the largest in the world. It is almost universal, which should relieve pressure on the means-tested public-pension system. Australia, in other words, has less reason to panic about supporting retiring baby-boomers than most other countries.
Yet pride is not the only emotion the system evokes. In December 2017, prompted…
