Up to 20 Australians a day are applying for early access to up to $10,000 in superannuation under the COVID-19 hardship provision.
New figures revealed that at least 3.8 million withdrawals totalling $31.9 billion had been made as of 28 July.
These include payments to 300,000 temporary visa holders.
Under the program extension, $41.9 billion is expected to be withdrawn from funds come December.
Robert Jeremenko, the Treasury’s division head of retirement income policy, told the Senate committee on COVID-19 on Thursday that the government was now expecting $41.9 billion to be removed from the super system following the extension of the scheme to December and taking into account “lived experience” of the pandemic, which indicated consumers had taken up the scheme in higher numbers than expected.
“The early access measure was developed in early March, and I don’t think anyone in Australia would have been able to predict what the impact of the pandemic was,” Mr Jeremenko said.
“What we had to do was use our best estimate, but the actual lived experience of those first three months up to 30 June was actually that we had $20.1 billion removed. So, what we did was, given the extra three months of actual numbers, assume a certain take-up for the remaining three months plus the extension.”
Mr Jeremenko added that Treasury could revise up the expected withdrawal numbers further depending on how many more consumers access the scheme.
“This six months we are in now, they are estimates. They are best estimates, but we will revise as we have done when we see actual numbers coming through and that will give us a real feel of the level of uptake,” he said.
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