Of all the human emotions, regret is possibly strongest, I fear.
It is instant, long-lasting, a ghost that recurs in the rest of our lives.
In politics, it is always, always, regret for the path not taken, the timidity of a moment that cost us the skirmish, the skirmish that cost us the battle, the battle that cost us the war.
Too often in politics we deal, or we end up dealing, not with the problem, but the politics of the problem. The rhetoric of the problem, dare I even say, the spin.
We try to paper over with bravado the fragility within.
We begin to forget "the realistics", if I may use that term, of whether it will actually happen, and we willfully, fearfully, stupidly, look the other way.
We lose the moment, and the future.
No reform is easy.
No change to our public life, no social contract, no brave new third way, can be taken for granted.
It has to be fought for, with all the guile and persistence of Fred Hollows, and all the brash force of Henry Chauvel, racing his horses for Beersheba water.
Victory is never certain. And struggle is inevitable, and intricate, and close-fought, and exhausting.
So when Hawke and Keating wanted to float the dollar or deregulate the financial markets they had to summon all the powers of their political persuasion.
The need to explain why it was necessary, to calm the anxiety and explain the detail of what such reform would do – this was perhaps unprecedented in Australian public life.
And when John Howard wanted to introduce a consumption based tax or re-write Australia's gun laws – he had to do likewise. The devil was well and truly in the detail. And the sell wasn't easy.
These agents of change – from both sides of the political divide – had to consistently and persistently argue the merits of the case and keep a firm grip on the detail and sketch out – with daily alacrity – what would happen when the changes were actually implemented.
With the superannuation reforms the Gillard Government has announced – bringing the Super Guarantee up to 12 percent and how it's afforded through the MRRT; and with a fiercely hostile opposition, I am finding the going harder than these good ideas deserve.
I am finding that the strongest argument for these retirement savings reforms, and the twenty three million lives they change is not a recitation of the details and the many chittering devils in the details, but a simple plea that we must, at day's end, avoid the regret that is bound to overwhelm us, like a deluge, at life's end, if we do not do the work now, and do it well.
This is particularly so because of the arithmetic we are in, in this Parliament, compared with the years, in the 1990s and 1980s, of stable majorities in the Lower House, and of civilised reason in the Senate.
What I'm saying here is when it comes to a change from 9 to 12 percent, a lot of people actually get it. And I know that most of you, in this room, absolutely get it.
You get it right in your bones.
Up the hill it's different. No reform is guaranteed there, and every vote is infected by fear of some consequence, more since the New South Wales election showed how fragile is any majority in any seat in the land.
The Coalition don't get it. They worry about the default funds, yet oppose 9 to 12 percent.
The Coalition MPs earn 15 percent or defined benefit yet do not regret opposing Super Guarantee increases.
I don't regret our policy. I regret if we miss the chance.
So if we are to avoid the deep regret of knowing what the country needs, but failing to deliver it – if we are to grasp satisfaction instead of lament – we need not just a consensus around the superannuation reforms, and we have it, but an army of active advocates.
We need to seize the arguments in favour and sell them to all parts of this Commonwealth of ours.
There are about 4,500 Australians who are 100 years old today.
In the next two decades there will be 45 thousand.
Longer life is surely the greatest gift of 20th century Australians to 21st century Australians. We worked for it, they have it.
The first of the four and a half million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1965 are celebrating their 65th birthdays this year.
And the average life expectancy of Australians has grown significantly for people born after the Second World War. They got the polio injections, the diphtheria injections, the emergency ambulances when they had a stroke.
Australian men and women are consequently living longer than ever before – the men till 80, the women till 85.
The question we have to ask ourselves though – and we'll regret it if we do not properly seek to answer it – is can we afford to live into our 80s and 90s and even 100 years?
At present Australia among the bottom in the OECD in terms of the incomes of older people as a proportion of average incomes in the population as a whole.
You heard it, we're among the worst.
We also fare worse than the OECD in our adequacy of retirement savings.
Poverty rates amongst Australian retirees are high by OECD standards. Proud of that, are we? I'm not.
That's why the Gillard-Swan Government's pension increases and super reforms considerably improve outcomes for older Australians. At last, at last.
Super and pension increases add 6 percentage points each to the adequacy of our retirement incomes system.
These are numbers worth keeping front of mind as we consider the trend of what Australians are doing with their lives – both before and after retirement, both of which are getting longer and longer.
Unlike those forebears born in 1910, the years of what used to be called "winding down" have changed.
People don't retire at 55 any more. More than ever they are mixing work and retirement, and volunteering and mentoring, in those wise years between 55 and 85.
It's different from how it was.
The Great Depression and Second World War generations of Australians did it tough. They were frugal in an era of bitter hardship and war, and widowhood and suburban sacrifice. But our current generations of Baby Boomers have learned to expect more and get more. Like Oliver they want more, and we are here to supply it.
The amount of money required to live reasonably is much higher than previous generations required. Or put another way, we are no longer as good at living frugally. We are healthier than our great grandparents. We are more active and energetic. We don't just play bowls and chess and Scrabble, we hike, we bicycle, we travel overseas. We are keen to change our lifestyles in the years of 55 to 75. This means we need more money.
So lifting compulsory superannuation from 9 to 12 percent, and raising concessional caps, is now urgent for the Boomers and my own generation Xers if they are to fulfil their reasonable dreams.
As for Generation Y, who will hit their 60s and 70s in the 2040s and 2050s, not too long now, who knows, who can guess, what they will need?
2010 to 2020 is a pivotal decade.
The first boomers are beginning to leave the workforce. We shall see more retirees, greater skills shortages, fewer tax payers as a proportion of the population and incomes being stretched to cover the years between 60 and 90.
Australians, not just governments, will have to take greater responsibility for the care of our last third of life on this mortal coil.
The consequences of living to 85 and 90 are profound. It is hard to contemplate retiring, stopping work and relying on savings at 55 anymore. You save for thirty-five years and then live for thirty-five years on what you have saved? It can't be done.
The combination of taxes paid and superannuation saved between 25 and 55 in order to pay for the last third of our lives, from 55 to 90, is not enough. We need to be thrifty and save more. But how?
Well, we should put more away, if we can, in the nest egg and work a little longer.
Today, the average superannuation lump sum of someone aged between 60 and 65 is $245,000 for men and $170,000 for women. By 2035, those numbers will lift to $485,000 for males and $345,000 for females – meaning women's super actually doubles. But a significant part of this forecast growth in balances will only with the Gillard Government being able to deliver, and deliver securely, our 12 percent superannuation reforms.
This is why the Minerals Rent Resource Tax is so important to our nation's future. Add the numbers. There is no other way.
Because it's a really good tax. MRRT pays for the loss of taxation revenue, of course it does, because more income will be taxed at the lower rate of 15 percent through greater superannuation contributions.
The arguments for the reform are even stronger after the recent profit reports of the big resource companies like BHP, Rio Tinto and Anglo American. They made a fortune out of us, and we want some of it.
The bottom line is that mining companies can afford the MRRT but Australians can't afford to grow old poor.
There is a myriad of debaters' levers that I could pull – and do pull. There's a myriad of rhetorical switches to vaudeville I could pull each week to argue the case for this utterly reasonable reform.
But the most powerful of all – when talking to an informed audience like you – is the argument of avoiding regret.
Let's not regret seeing Australia falling behind the rest of the world, the developed world, when it comes to the cost of growing old gracefully, and comfortably, and contentedly, and well.
Let's not regret having put an impost on future generations for the cost of aged welfare in our time.
Let's not regret our failure to provide for future generations who will work hard and retire poor – because of this road we did not take, to the gate we did not enter, of a better, fair-go Australia.
To avoid this regret you can't take anything for granted, in an adversarial Federal Parliament the House where each vote is closely contested.
And I need you to help me convince everyone in the political spectrum of our case, and the consequences if we do not enact it, securely, proudly, and soon.
I need you to say to your boards and your shareholders, your fellow club members, your newsagent, your favourite restaurateur, the friends you play social cricket with, and swim with at Surfers Paradise – I need you to say that the arithmetic affords no other fountain of youth, no other elixir of life.
I need you to help advocate a tax rightly owed on our natural resources and generously paid by men and women who have done well out of Australia, to sustain Australians in their fading years in a manner, and a frugally generous standard, they earned by their work in their lifetime, work that made the economy, our economy, the fireproof triumph it is today.
Thank you for your time tonight, and thank you, in advance, for your help.