Contrary to the opinion of his critics, John Howard has not robbed from the poor to give to the rich. He’s largely preserved the world’s best welfare system he inherited and has mostly resisted pressure (even from ALP quarters) to slash top income tax rates.

But the Government’s super changes really did throw the switch to vaudeville. If you’re wealthy and near retirement you can now run your own affairs mostly inside the cosy flat tax bubble of your super fund. Why pay 46.5 per cent when you can pay 15? Despite her sympathy with the woes of her Eastern Suburb’s clients and their groaning wallets, even my tax advisor was taken aback at the Government’s largesse.

Still, it was the ALP who set flat tax super up – overwhelmingly favouring the wealthy and political considerations will constrain it from changing course any time soon. Then again if Labor wins government, rising revenue costs will eventually force change.

In the meantime, the ALP continues to buy the idea of savings ‘incentives’ – with the media reporting plans to lower contributions tax for lower income earners and raise the threshold of the means test for government co-contributions.

Incentives are normally preferable to compulsion. But super is different. Savings incentives work badly in low income households because they often lack financial savvy. And the top end of town will look after themselves pretty well with or without savings incentives.

The very least we could do is introduce ‘default’ super as New Zealand did, according to which people’s super contributions rise through time unless they deliberately opt out. And would it be so scary to revert to the original Labor script, and gradually ratchet up compulsory super by – say – half a per cent a year?

Also, if it’s votes you’re after, how about letting people use their super for a home deposit? Officials from the Government and the super industry just fell out of their chair. They don’t want to deplete an already inadequate savings pool for funding retirement.

Very sensible too! So lets walk and chew gum. Let’s use the ideas embodied in the HECS student loans scheme and also taken up in New Zealand’s ‘opt in’ super scheme. Make people’s access to super for non-retirement investment conditional on their committing to increase future contributions sufficiently to repay their fund over time.