Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has today once again admitted the Coalition are prepared to scrap Labor’s increase of universal superannuation from 9 to 12 per cent should they be elected.

This is getting ridiculous.  He has been caught out twice in 5 days.

Hansard has picked up the Shadow Treasurer’s interjection during Question Time where he once again flagged that the Coalition would scrap the 12% Superannuation Guarantee.

Dr EMERSON: you need to know that the MRRT is a tax designed to collect for the community a fair share of the revenue. We will always do the right thing. We will increase superannuation from nine to 12 per cent and the shadow Treasurer said, on Friday, that they would not. They would scrap it.

Mr Hockey interjecting--

Dr EMERSON: There he is again.

Mr Hockey: We'd scrap it, yeah. That's a revelation, is it?

This comes after the Shadow Treasurer’s embarrassment on Friday where he said the expenditure next to the MRRT “would go” despite knowing full well that the increase in superannuation (given the concessional tax treatment of super) is partly funded by the mining tax.

Last Friday he even listed “increasing the superannuation guarantee from 9% to 12%” in the list of measures on the Coalition’s chopping block.

The Leader of the Opposition’s office had to pull Mr Hockey into line early Friday evening.

After this embarrassment Mr Hockey took to Twitter in an attempt to re-write history by telling Crikey’s Bernard Keane that the Coalition had supported the increase in the Superannuation Guarantee.

In his tweet Mr Hockey said “we supported the legislation”.  But once again the Hansard record shows clearly all Coalition MPs voted against the legislation to lift the Superannuation Guarantee from 9 to 12%.

Joe Hockey continues to get into trouble on the question of the Superannuation Guarantee increase – the real question is why?   Even for him this is too sloppy on the detail.

Just who is running the Opposition here – Mr Abbott or Mr Hockey?

You cannot trust the conservatives with superannuation because they have never believed in it, never supported it.

Mr Shorten’s Media Contact: Sam Casey — 0421 697 660