Our regular round-up of what Noel Whittaker has been writing around the traps.
Writing for YourLifeChoices, Noel Whittaker steps into one of the liveliest arguments in Australian money policy right now: is your superannuation your own money to use as you please, or a national asset that should stay locked up for retirement?
The question matters because of growing political pressure to let people dip into super early — most notably for a first-home deposit. Noel's answer starts with what super was built to do. The system Paul Keating designed turned modest, automatic employer contributions into professionally managed retirement wealth, powered by compound interest. Contributions began at 3 per cent of wages in the early 1990s and reached 12 per cent in 2025, and the system now holds around $4.5 trillion. His example: a 40-year-old earning $55,000 with $100,000 already in super could reach roughly $1.3 million by 65 — about $700,000 in today's dollars — without adding a cent of their own.
Noel doesn't dismiss the housing problem. He points out there are already structured ways to use super for a deposit, such as the First Home Super Saver Scheme, which allows up to $50,000 to be released, and he can see a case for schemes that require the money to be repaid when the home is sold. What he warns against is anything that turns super into an all-purpose cash machine. For readers in their 40s and 50s, the takeaway is simple: the guard rails around your super are a feature, not a bug — they are what lets compounding finish the job.
"Once we start treating it as money for anything else, we risk destroying the very thing that made it work."
Read the full article: Superannuation: Your money, or a national asset? — Noel Whittaker, YourLifeChoices, 25 August 2026.
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