Australians Withdraw Early from Superannuation Fund

Fiji is not the only country where people have withdrawn money from their superannuation funds to use during this extraordinary time.

The Australian Government has directed that the privately owned superannuation funds in Australia make provisions to allow members to withdraw large sums of money.

In our case, Fiji has gone a step further and topped up funds for those who have had less than $1000 in their general fund.

Those who claim that decision to allow Fijians to withdraw from their provident fund is the first in the world are blatantly lying and attempting to mislead Fijians.

Or they are not aware of what is happening in other parts of the world, or in their own backyard as is the case for some keyboard warriors?

More than 600,000 Australians withdrew early from their superannuation funds, Australian equivalent of provident fund.

In Australia, there are a number of super fund providers and workers can opt to put their fund in any one of those.

In March, the Australian Government had announced that they would be making provisions to allow people for early withdrawal. The superannuation funds in Australia are privately owned and the

Australian Government has been firm that they should allow Australians to withdraw up to A$20,000 (F$29,075) as they face hardships due to COVID-19.

From April 20, the Scott Morrison Government allowed retrenched workers and those suffering financial hardship because of shutdowns to access up to A$20,000 in super and take it out tax free.

The first $A10,000 (F$14,536) is available between mid-April and July 1, and the second A$10,000 is available after July 1 for about three months.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) said as of midnight April 8, it had 617,800 registrations of interest, but could not yet estimate how many people would be eligible to draw down.

had reported that the Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg had said super fund trustees should have managed their legal obligations responsibly over the years to ensure that they have “appropriate liquidity”.

He warned that if they do not regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has a number of levers it can pull, including directing mergers in cases where a fund is unable to meet the needs of members.