Well, over here, your employer is required to contribute 9% of your gross pay to superannuation. This is taken pre-tax and super has significant tax advantages. You can choose between your own, privately managed super fund, an industry fund, an employer fund or any of the various private funds.

There's legislation regarding fees and other things and in most of them you can tailor your investment strategy within the specific fund.

You can't touch the money unitl you retire unless you can prove exceptional hardship - not even being bankrupt can necessarily touch it.

Pension (social security) is paid to those who don't have sufficient super income (super is growing, it's basically replacing the aged pension).

Some employers offer a higher contribution and, of course, you can contribute yourself (also pre-tax). Upon retirement, you can take a certain percentage tax free each year or you can take more and pay tax (the idea is to encourage people not to blow it all).

At the end of the day, the bit about employers paying the super is just a way of forcing it to happen rather than relying on individuals who might be tempted to spend it instead - it's just privatisation of what you guys call social security. We haven't removed social security, but the vast, vast majority of people with superannuation will not qualify for it on retirement.

For those on a lower income there's a scaled (up to about 50k a year-ish) potential for the government to co-contribute to match your personal contributions to super (not including the 9% from the employer) up to a certain limit. The idea again, is to encourage people to save more and the cost to the government now is obviously less than it wil be later and that investment by the government will appreciate at a better rate.

That's a very simplistic view but, in short, it's private social security in the sense that many of you here are talking about. It works.

And I'm glad that a fundamentally left-of-the-US country can show you the way (/wave Borofin :-)