Retiring renters facing disaster without intervention
Australian renters need nearly twice as much pension as homeowners to retire comfortably and face a crisis without further government help.
Super Consumers Australia boss Xavier O’Halloran said tenants risked a “retirement disaster” without government intervention.
“Simply telling tenants to ‘save more’ is not the solution to this problem,” he said.
“Tenants face real risk of retirement disaster unless the government acts.”
The organization’s 2026 Retirement Savings Goals for Renters report, released Tuesday, found that more than 325,000 older retirees received Federal Rental Assistance in June 2025.
Almost a third were still experiencing rent stress after rent assistance was paid; They were spending more than a third of their income on rent.
The typical retiree renting alone would need $659,000 for retirement income, while a homeowner retiree would need $322,000, according to the report, which is based on spending data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The couples’ retirement total needed $786,000, while an equivalent homeownership couple needed $432,000.
Mr O’Halloran said long-term solutions focused on getting more people into affordable housing, but retirees’ renting needed help now.
“There is a crisis facing pensioners at the moment – Commonwealth rental assistance is not keeping up with real rents,” he said.
Super Consumers Australia wants the federal government to urgently address rental assistance.
“Every day this goes unaddressed, tenants face an impossible financial challenge in retirement,” Mr O’Halloran said.
Super Consumers Australia has called on superannuation funds to provide members with better tools to understand their retirement savings and goals.
Asset manager AMP on Tuesday released a platform where users can measure their super fund’s performance, fees and other metrics against rivals, based on third-party data from SuperRatings.
“There are still some funds trading as of yesterday,” Melinda Howes, superannuation group manager at AMP, told AAP.
Some funds spent a lot of money to market themselves as top performers, but that’s no longer the case, he said.
“There is a long-standing belief that sector funds are always cheaper and outperform retail funds, and we expect this tool to help dispel this myth,” Ms Howes said.
The tool allows users to compare fund returns over the past year, three years or five years, as well as insurance costs and other fees, digital offerings and social environmental governance.
Ms Howes hoped the tool would help the nearly one in two Australians who are insecure about their retirement take better care of it.
“Transparency promotes competition and raises standards across the sector, highlighting the funds actually available to members,” he said.
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