Mr Joyce said they would be better off using the extra money to buy their own homes, setting them up materially for when they start drawing on the pension.

As the Turnbull government struggles to take the lead on the tax debate, with just three months to go until the budget, it is reportedly being urged to consider a proposal to allow low income workers to opt out of compulsory super contributions so they can have a better standard of living before they retire.

The proposal would enable low income earners to take home the 9.5 per cent of their pay packets that currently goes into super.

It would allow a part-time worker earning $35,000 a year to take home an extra $63 a week, or about $3300 each year.

Mr Joyce said on Sunday that the idea made sense because it would allow low income earners to use that extra money to buy their own homes, so by the time they retired they would have their own home to live in while drawing a pension.

That would set them up well materially, he said, in a way that a lifetime's worth of small super contributions would not.

"If people invest that money at a younger age in a substantial capital asset, such as the house they live in, then I think that will fit them out well for later on in life," Mr Joyce told Sky News.

"One of the greatest advantages you can have in this nation is to be the owner of your own dwelling, and people in regional areas, who are generally on lower wages, also have cheaper houses [to buy].

"And if we can get them to invest that into a house, and by the time of their retirement they own a house, then ultimately they're well fitted out so that if they receive the pension and own their house they're in a better position than most."

Pauline Vamos​, chief executive of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, says the idea ran counter to the original point of super and people needed to calm down and stop suggesting ways to tinker with the system.

"There have been so many different conversations about super changes," Ms Vamos said.

"We've got to stop a lot of this hysteria. The super system is only just starting to mature. It's just starting to provide most Australians with income from the aged pension as well as income from super, but people are still running out of money by the time they're 85.

"We've got to get it to last for the whole of retirement, which we're still a little way off yet," she said.

Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen said the idea Mr Joyce agreed with was dumb and sounded like nothing more than a thought bubble.

"It's not well thought through," he said.

"My concern is there's too much policy that is either politically motivated or it's made at reasonably short notice without due consideration of implications.

"A classic example was the [insulation batts] debacle, where yes it seemed like a good idea but no one had thought through the implications, which is always a reason to make haste slowly with policy," he said.

Mr Jensen and Liberal senator Chris Back said if the government was considering allowing people to dip into their super accounts it should allow students to do so to pay down their HECS debts.

That idea was floated last year by John Adams, a former adviser to Senator Arthur Sinodinos, who said students should be allowed to use their super to pay off their HECS debts, and that would help the government reduce its own debt.

He said the idea would not undermine the policy intent of universal compulsory super because students who wanted to use it would have to agree to repay the withdrawn capital with additional contributions with after tax income.

Mr Joyce is a member of the Turnbull government's expenditure review committee, which advises the cabinet on budget spending priorities.