Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe dismissed concerns over liquidity in the superannuation system and poured cold water over suggestions the central bank could provide support, saying funds have had plenty of time to prepare for the early access scheme, which was announced in March in response to the coronavirus crisis.

The government relaxed the rules around early access to super on compassionate grounds so that people who meet certain criteria, such as having been made redundant in the pandemic, are able to withdraw up to $20,000 over the next 2 financial years.

As of last week Monday, the ATO had received over 900,000 expressions of interest for participation of this scheme.

Assistant Superannuation Minister Jane Hume is very disappointed in Industry Super Australia, which represents 15 funds which manage a combined $142 billion as they spent members’ money to conduct push-polling in order to undermine confidence in the early payout scheme, rather than setting that money aside for the expected payout requests.

With the push-polling, they tried to get the RBA to support them with money for those payouts, but that door has now been robustly closed by Philip Lowe.