Australia

With $3m in super, you could draw $100k/year and assuming 5% growth you'd have over $3.5m after 10 years:

Year,Starting Balance,Withdrawal,Interest Earned (5%),Year-End Balance  
1,"$3,000,000","−$100,000","+$145,000","$3,045,000"  
2,"$3,045,000","−$100,000","+$147,250","$3,092,250"  
3,"$3,092,250","−$100,000","+$149,613","$3,141,863"  
4,"$3,141,863","−$100,000","+$152,093","$3,193,956"  
5,"$3,193,956","−$100,000","+$154,698","$3,248,653"  
6,"$3,248,653","−$100,000","+$157,433","$3,306,086"  
7,"$3,306,086","−$100,000","+$160,304","$3,366,390"  
8,"$3,366,390","−$100,000","+$163,320","$3,429,710"  
9,"$3,429,710","−$100,000","+$166,485","$3,496,195"  
10,"$3,496,195","−$100,000","+$169,810","$3,566,005"  

"But $100k won't be enough in ten years!" I hear you say. Ok, let's give ourselves a 10% pay-rise every 10 years.

Year Range,Annual Withdrawal,Year-End Balance (End of Decade)  
Years 1–10,"$100,000.00","$3,566,005"  
Years 11–20,"$110,000.00","$4,355,900"  
Years 21–30,"$121,000.00","$5,497,281"  
Years 31–40,"$133,100.00","$7,196,668"  

With a starting fund of $3m, and a 10% payrise every decade, after 40 years we have over $7m in our super fund. Now, what happens to our poor rich person who needs to pay 30% on growth above $3m?

Year,Annual Withdrawal,Ending Balance,Annual Tax Paid
1,"$100,000","$3,045,000",$0
10,"$110,000","$3,472,749","~$6,144"
20,"$133,100","$3,871,911","~$12,048"
30,"$161,051","$4,110,378","~$15,716"
40,"$194,872","**$4,052,857**","~$15,271"

Instead of ending up with $7m after 40 years, this poor individual now only has $4m after 40 years.

As I said, I really wish I had this problem!

If you have $3m in Superannuation, with a standard 6% ROI annually, you could spend $180K of “earned interest” every year without ever touching your principal.

People with inadequate wages don't have $3m super accounts. This law affects 0.5% of Australians.

but news articles are mostly written by people from wealth now, because who can live on a journalist wage these days

That's a bold claim; I don't disagree that journalists are generally underpaid, but none of the journalists I personally know are particularly wealthy afaik. (Obviously this is my anecdotal experience)

Although furthermore, journalists don't have to be wealthy to be pressured into writing in support for the wealthy. This is a systemic part of how major news companies are run to satisfy their ultrawealthy major stakeholders (see my other comment: TL;DR ~97% of news readership funnels up to News Corp, Nine or Seven). Someone trying to write articles against the interests of the company owners won't last long.

General reminder to the people reading this article: whether they understand or not, someone with a net worth of 10 million is a hundred times closer to a houso than they are to a billionaire.

Do you honestly think that 0.5% of the population are responsible for 50% of the nation's income tax? That's hysterical.

We aren't talking about specialist doctors and lawyers and successful salespeople. Those peasants on their measly half-million annual salaries are not putting enough away to be affected by this law.

In point of fact, these people are rich enough to employ wealth managers and accountants to manage their tax affairs. Retainers who know and utilise every tax loophole to minimise the tax they pay. You'd be surprised how little as a percentage of their income they are paying the ATO. Economically, we would miss none of them if they left.

We're talking about people who are putting over $100k per year into their super funds. They are not moving in the same circles as you and me.