JENI O’DOWD: Don Farrell’s US lamb trade proposal shows Labor’s super hypocrisy amid the cost-of-living crisis

Offering our super to Donald Trump to save Australian lamb is one of the more ridiculous schemes I have ever heard, and yet another reason why the Albanese government deserves to be punted at the next election.

We can barely afford to live. We can barely afford the weekly shop. And now Labor wants to put its hands on the one thing we’ve been told our whole working lives is untouchable. Our super.

Last week, at a G20 trade meeting in Milwaukee, Trade Minister Don Farrell raised an idea with Donald Trump’s people. If America goes easy on our sheep farmers, Australia could invest in America’s lamb industry.

And where might that money come from? Our super, poured into American meat-processing plants.

Maybe I’m too kind saying ridiculous; let’s land on idiotic. Clueless. And no idea what the average Aussie is going through.

Farrell says the response from Trump’s trade representative Jamieson Greer and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was “positive”. I bet it was. Who wouldn’t be positive about a foreign country offering to bankroll your struggling industry with other people’s retirement savings?

His argument is that the super sector has an obligation to the national interest.

Actually, it doesn’t. The super industry’s obligation is to a cleaner in Penrith, a nurse in Geelong or a Perth tradie whose money it is. By law, a fund must act in its members’ best financial interests. Not the Trade Minister. Not the sheep farmers. And certainly not Donald Trump.

The industry wasted no time pointing that out. Super Members Council chief executive Misha Schubert called the idea “ill-informed” and said it was not the job of super funds to solve other policy problems. ASFA’s Mary Delahunty said it hadn’t even been raised with the sector.

So Don Farrell flew to America to offer up money he doesn’t control, without bothering to ask the people who do.

Now about the timing.

Just days earlier, the Reserve Bank lifted interest rates for the fourth time this year, to 4.6 per cent, the highest since 2011.

For a typical family with a $600,000 mortgage, that’s about another $91 a month, on top of the three rises before it.

Melbourne mum Nicole Sherwin knows exactly how that feels. She told Yahoo News she prides herself on being frugal.

Her family rarely eats out anymore, and she thinks twice before buying a second coffee.

When she tried to join a gym, the owner suggested she work out what she could cut back on to afford it. That’s when it hit her. Every dollar earned was already going on essentials.

“There is nothing left to cut to prioritise my health,” she said.

And that’s a two-income household. Parenthood says raising a single child now costs an Australian family around $17,800 a year. This woman has two.

This is the reality in kitchens right across the country. People aren’t cutting back on luxuries anymore. They’re cutting back on dinner. They’re eating mince instead of lamb, and rice and pasta instead of fresh vegetables.

For many of those families, super is the one thing the cost-of-living crisis hasn’t been able to touch. It isn’t a slush fund. It’s our wages we never got to spend, put aside so we don’t end up choosing between heating and eating in old age. It should be sacred.

Which is what makes this so galling.

In August, when Pauline Hanson suggested people should be able to dip into their super early, Labor went into meltdown.

Jim Chalmers warned the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation would “absolutely decimate” the retirement incomes of millions of workers. Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino said they were “coming after your superannuation”. Chalmers even promised Labor would defend the system forever.

Six weeks later, Labor’s own Trade Minister is sliding it across the table to the White House.

Give me a break.

By Sunday, Chalmers was on Insiders trying to hose it down.

The government would “never” interfere with what funds owe their members, he said, but Farrell was only reflecting a view that “there are opportunities for super right around the world”.

So which is it? Either super is off limits or it’s a bargaining chip.

Hanson’s line in August was that your super is not Labor’s piggy bank. I didn’t expect Labor to prove her right quite so quickly.

This isn’t the first sign of that thinking. In July, Anthony Albanese spooked plenty of people by describing the $4.8 trillion super pool as a “national asset”. It isn’t. It’s ours.

Then there’s the sheer absurdity. We would be using Australian workers’ savings to prop up the very industry that competes with Australian farmers.

American sheep producers, backed by dozens of Republicans in Congress, have long accused us of undercutting their market. Their industry has been shrinking for decades, and their answer has been to lobby for tariffs on us. Our answer, apparently, is to send them a cheque, using your money.

It’s like a scene out of MobLand. We pay protection money, then bankroll the other bloke’s shop. FFS.

And if it works for lamb, where does it stop? Beef? Wine? Aluminium? Every time Trump throws a tariff tantrum, does Canberra reach for our retirement savings to settle him down?

I know Farrell is no novice. He helped get China’s punishing tariffs on our barley and wine lifted, which makes this even harder to understand. He knows how trade works. He should know better.

I understand the pressure our farmers are under. Australia exported $1.6 billion worth of sheep meat to the US last year, and an American trade investigation could bring fresh tariffs in the coming months.

They deserve a government that fights hard for them. But you don’t fight for one group of Australians by gambling with everyone else’s savings.

We are exhausted. Four rate rises this year. Grocery bills that make you wince. Everyone has done everything we’ve been told, tightening our belts until there are no holes left. Who can take it anymore?

Keep your hands off our super, Don. It was never yours to offer. Hopefully, on election day, voters will remember this.

To borrow Gough Whitlam’s famous slogan: It’s Time.