QSuper was established in 1990 under Queensland legislation as the super scheme for state government employees. New members stopped going into the defined benefit by default from May 2000, and the account was closed to new members altogether on 12 November 2008. Since the 2022 merger with Sunsuper, QSuper accounts sit inside Australian Retirement Trust, in what is now called the Government Division.

The people who still hold one joined the Queensland public sector before the closure: public servants, teachers, nurses and other health workers, police, firefighters and ambulance officers. At 30 June 2024 there were 26,484 active defined benefit members, with an average age of 57.2 and average membership of 28.8 years. Total defined benefit membership fell from 59,145 in 2021 to 44,504 in 2024. In other words, a large share of the remaining members are moving through their retirement decisions right now.

Two structural points worth knowing before anything else. First, it is a taxed scheme. QSuper is a complying fund taxed like ordinary super, which means that once your benefit moves into an accumulation or retirement income account, withdrawals after 60 are tax-free for most people. Some other public sector schemes, mainly Commonwealth ones, work differently, so do not assume rules you have read about CSS or PSS apply to you. Second, the benefit is well backed. At 30 June 2024 the scheme held assets equal to 143 per cent of the actuarial value of members' accrued benefits, and a statutory Queensland Government guarantee stands behind the defined benefit obligations. Whatever you decide, on the scheme's own published funding position, benefit security is not the pressing question.

One naming trap. The Standard Defined Benefit account pays out as a lump-sum-style benefit. It is not a pension for life. The old State and Police schemes, which some long-serving members transferred from in the early 1990s, are separate legacy schemes with their own rules. This guide covers the Standard Defined Benefit account.

The multiple is the engine. Contribute at the standard 5% after-tax rate working full time and it grows by 0.21 each year: after 10 years your multiple is 2.1, meaning 2.1 times your final salary. Contribute less and it grows more slowly. The full table, from ART's Defined Benefit Account Guide:

Your employer contributes on a matching scale, from 9.75% at a 2% member rate to 15.75% at 8%, with 12.75% at the default; the full schedule is in the current Defined Benefit Account Guide. Police have their own scale: member rates of 3 to 6% standard with a 6% default, catch-up rates up to 9%, and employer contributions of 12 to 24%.

The defined benefit does not move with markets. Your employer bears the investment risk, and ART's product page states the benefit "is not impacted by the ups and downs of the investment market". A rough year on sharemarkets that would knock an accumulation balance around simply does not touch the formula. You also do not pay the account fees; they are covered by the pool of members.

The insurance is the part people forget. Defined benefit members automatically receive cover with no premiums, and it cannot be cancelled: death and total and permanent disability cover that pays the benefit projected to age 55, terminal medical condition cover, and income protection of up to 75% of salary for up to two years, available to age 75. For total and permanent disability before 55 there is even a defined pension option. The insured death and TPD benefit ends when you turn 55, which cuts both ways: before 55 it is a valuable thing to give up, and after 55 its absence is one less reason to stay.

None of this means keeping the account is automatically right. It means the starting point is understanding what you would give up, because you cannot buy any of it back.

This is the decision that does the most damage when it is rushed. Resign before 55 and the benefit splits. The member part, your contributions plus interest, transfers to an accumulation account. The employer part defaults to a Deferred Retirement Benefit, a DRB, which increases every quarter in line with average weekly ordinary time earnings until you turn 55. At 30 June 2024 there were 15,930 deferred members, average age 51, average balance $89,000.

The alternative is electing to take a discounted transfer value instead of the DRB. The discount is steep, and it is published in ART's own guide:

Formula per the guide: value x 1 / 1.0288^(55 minus your age). Figures from ART's Defined Benefit Account Guide.

ART's guide includes a hypothetical member, Gary, who resigns at 40 with a DRB of $400,000 against a transfer value of $261,274. On the guide's assumptions, Gary would need to earn at least 7% a year for 15 years in an accumulation account just to match what the DRB would have delivered, and he carries the market risk the whole way. That example is the fund's own, and it is worth sitting with.

None of this says never take the transfer. There are situations where consolidating makes sense despite the discount. It says the default is not neutral: doing nothing keeps the DRB growing with wages, while the discounted transfer is an active choice that needs a reason.

At 55 the discount question disappears. Resign at 55 or over and your entire defined benefit is transferred to a QSuper Accumulation account, invested in the default Lifetime option unless you direct otherwise. The only way to keep the defined benefit account is to move to another eligible defined benefit employer within one month of leaving.

Redundancy has its own rules, and they are kinder than resignation. Accept a redundancy package and the account must close, but the full benefit, member and employer parts, transfers undiscounted, with no DRB even if you are under 55. Contributions you made before 1 July 1999 that were restricted non-preserved become unrestricted and available as cash on redundancy. If a redundancy offer is on the table, the defined benefit treatment belongs in the middle of that decision, not as an afterthought.

One mechanical point catches people at the end. Your benefit is calculated at your exit date, then treated as invested in your chosen accumulation option until the transfer is processed, moving with unit prices in between. The amount that lands can be higher or lower than the figure on your exit calculation. It is not an error; it is how the transfer works.

From preservation age, now 60, and while you are under 65, you can move part or all of your defined benefit into a Transition to Retirement Income account and draw an income while you keep working. For an accumulation member a TTR pension is a reversible arrangement. For a defined benefit member it is not: your multiple falls in proportion to the dollars you move, and it stays fallen.

That does not make TTR wrong for defined benefit members. It makes the bar higher. The strategy has to earn back a permanent reduction in a formula-based benefit backed by a statutory guarantee, which is a harder test than it faces in an accumulation account. How TTR pensions work in general, including the tax and the traps, is covered in our transition to retirement guide; the permanent multiple reduction is the extra chapter that applies only to you.

Sixty is the gateway age. It is preservation age for everyone still under it, and it is when the retirement income options in section 9 become available. What happens to super at 60 more broadly is covered in our guide to super at 60.

At 65 you gain access to your super regardless of whether you are working, and you can ask to transfer your defined benefit entitlement to an accumulation account while staying employed. If you do, your multiple resets to zero and starts growing again from there. That can suit some situations and quietly cost others, because the years after 65 would otherwise keep compounding a large multiple against your final salary.

At 75 the choice ends. You are no longer eligible to hold a Defined Benefit account and it closes on your 75th birthday. Very few members get near that line, but if you plan to work into your seventies it belongs in your planning.

First, the reassuring one. Because QSuper is a taxed scheme, once your benefit is in an accumulation or retirement income account, withdrawals after 60 are tax-free for most people, and income account earnings in retirement phase are untaxed. Members of untaxed Commonwealth schemes face a very different picture; you do not.

Second, contributions caps work differently for you. Your concessional contributions are not the dollars going in; they are measured by a notional formula based on your 1 July salary. The formula result is capped at the concessional cap, but any extra concessional contributions you or your employer make to an accumulation account on the side can push you over it. If you are salary sacrificing extra super on top of the defined benefit, this is worth a check. Related detail: if you salary sacrifice your standard member contributions, they must be grossed up for the 15% contributions tax, so the default 5% becomes 5.88% before tax.

Third, the deferred tax debt. Division 293 tax, the extra 15% on concessional contributions for people with income plus contributions over $250,000, is deferred for defined benefit members rather than paid each year. It falls due when the first benefit payment is made from the account. Long-serving members in higher salary bands can reach that threshold, and the debt arriving at retirement is an unwelcome surprise if nobody mentioned it earlier.

At retirement your defined benefit cannot go straight into an income product. It transfers to your accumulation account, and from there you choose. A Retirement Income account is the flexible option: earnings are tax-free, payments after 60 are tax-free, you control the drawdowns above the minimum, and the balance remains yours.

The Lifetime Pension is the other path, available between 60 and 80. Your purchase amount is pooled with other members and it pays a fortnightly income for the rest of your life, with an option covering your spouse's life too. Payments adjust annually and may go up or down. There can be advantages under the Age Pension means tests. And it is permanent: after the six-month cooling-off period there is no exit except a terminal medical condition. Splitting the benefit between an income account and a Lifetime Pension is possible, which is exactly the kind of allocation decision that repays proper modelling, and that modelling is the core of our retirement planning work.

Two neighbouring topics matter here and get their own space. How an account-based pension interacts with the Age Pension assets and income tests is covered in our Age Pension guide. And if you hold one of the legacy State or Police defined pensions rather than the Standard Defined Benefit account, Centrelink treats defined benefit pensions under different rules again, so do not map this section onto those schemes.