"I have never expected the Liberals to believe in much but as a conservative party you would expect them to believe in thrift. But the Liberal Party of Australia does not even believe in thrift. It is always trying to pull the plug out of the bath of Australia's universal superannuation pool." Mr Keating's foray into the debate comes days after the Treasurer raised the prospect of allowing people to dip into their super over the course of their lives, saying perhaps Australians ought to think differently about the way in which super savings can be used if they were going to be living longer. His suggestion comes off the back of the Abbott government's Intergenerational Report, released last week, which showed Australians born in 2055 will have an average life expectancy of roughly 95 years, meaning they will likely have to work for much longer in the future. On the weekend, Mr Hockey said Australians could perhaps dip into their super savings to pay for things such as job retraining, or buying their first home. On Monday Prime Minister Tony Abbott supported Mr Hockey, saying his suggestion was "a perfectly good and respectable idea" and he hoped Australians keep debating it.

"I can remember back in the early '90s when I was helping John Hewson to draft the 'fightback' statement, putting in a suggestion to this effect," Mr Abbott said. "It is something that I am very happy to see further debated but there are obviously some issues around it and let's fully consider it. At this stage we don't have any plans to introduce it." In an opinion piece , for Fairfax Media published on Tuesday, Mr Keating accuses the Liberal Party of attacking Australia's super system for ideological reasons, saying "mandatory superannuation gets right up their nose." "The Liberals have always hated national superannuation for the broad workforce," Mr Keating writes. "Superannuation for them is fundamentally an ideological matter. Just like Medicare, the Liberals object to the universality of Medicare and they keep having a go at it, like the recent attempt to require a co-payment to doctors.

"They have now dropped off that because the going got too rough for them. So that having failed, they are back at it again at super – the other great universal scheme. "But instead of saying they oppose it ideologically, and arguing their case intellectually, the Treasurer will try to reach the same outcome by masking his real intentions as a professed concern for homebuyers." Figures from the Bureau of Statistics show the median value of homes purchased by first home buyers is around $370,000 to $400,000, and the average superannuation balance of 30 to 34 year olds in Australia is roughly $28,000. Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia says the average super balance increases steadily by age group, up until about age 60, when they start to decrease due to individuals starting to draw down on their savings. David Whiteley, the chief executive of Industry Super Australia, says a typical $40,000 deposit for a first home would wipe out completely the first nine years of a young adult's super savings and reduce their retirement savings by $140,000 in current prices - with $100,000 lost in compound interest.

Mr Keating also makes this point in his column. "Any meaningful housing deposit taken from the accumulated savings of younger savers would effectively eliminate or near eliminate the base from which the important compounding [of earnings] would otherwise occur," Mr Keating writes. Saul Eslake, the chief economist of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says if young adults used their super savings to buy a home they may be compensated later in life by increases in the value of that home, but that could not be guaranteed. On Monday Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen slammed Mr Abbott's support for Mr Hockey, saying Mr Hockey's idea "will undermine our super system and actually put more pressure on the aged pension system over the next 40 years". But Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg dismissed such concerns, saying "the Coalition is the best friend that super ever had."