I presume you are talking about the "Superannuation Guarantee", whereby 9.25% of everyone's salary gets diverted to an account, which can't be accessed until retirement at age 60+ ? One difference between the Norwegian fund and Australia's superannuation is that superannuation accounts are personal, so people without a salary don't get any benefit. The total value of Australia's superannuation is about AUD1.7e12, about AUD74,000 per person, a bit under half the Norgegian figure. This is inequitably distributed though, with an awful lot of people (anyone that doesn't receive a wage/salary) having virtually none.

Yep, this is a problem particularly for women, who tend to get paid less than men and take time off to care for children -- for example, half of all women aged 45 to 59 have $8,000 or less in their superannuation funds. http://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/gender-gap-retire...

Also note that despite the name of Norway's fund, it is not in fact the "real" current pension fund.

Pensions are paid from the Government Pension Fund - Norway. The sovereign wealth fund in the article is the Government Pension Fund - Global.

The former is what people pay into from their taxes, and is used to directly pay pensions. The latter is currently only used sparingly.