It is a particularly low thing to do, to exploit a national health emergency, particularly one as grave as the one brought on by the current hyper infectious virus, to blatantly pursue a purely ideological gambit, to destroy a national institution – but this is what businessman Tony Shepherd is attempting to do with superannuation.

Shepherd’s proposal is to suspend the 9.5 per cent of wages currently allocated to individual superannuation accounts, to break the compulsory saving of the entire workforce, whether the great majority of the workforce need or could use the extra cash income or not.

A woman has her temperature checked at the Sydney fish market as the nation deals with the COVID-19 crisis. Credit:AAP

This proposal is utterly different than that proposed by the government, where up to $20,000 of superannuation savings could, in calibrated circumstances of need, be made available to superannuation savers.

Shepherd’s proposal is to suspend the national capital flow into superannuation altogether, the whole 9.5 per cent of it, in the hope that he and ideological accomplices like him, can stand the government up in not having a suspended 9.5 per cent ever reinstated.