I have worked in Australia, Singapore and Germany. When mentioning salary, we usually qualify it with either "Gross" or "Net", which corresponds to 1) and 2) respectively on your list.
It's most definitely your money. You earned it. The money was transferred from your employer's bank account to an account in your name. The only difference is you can't spend it today.
( It was a clever mind hack by the Keating Labor government to have super not be a subset of your base salary, but rather as an on-top-of entitlement for employees—or from the employer's perspective, an additional wages cost just like payroll tax. Had it gone the other way, people would be more sensitive to their earned money being locked away. )
Re: the mind hack - yes, I agree. However, in light of recent discussions about raising the 9.5% SGL I went and looked at my latest contract which quite clearly says should that 9.5% go up, my total compensation will not change, so my base compensation will thus fall to ... compensate.
Even though that doesn't financially penalise me, it still feels a bit mean. From the company's point of view though, I'm sure they'd view it as far more mean if the government suddenly told them they're obliged to pay everyone more.
The mind hack aspect was important for the transition from the pensions and ad-hoc systems that came before them. Now that superannuation has near-universal support, any employers (like yours) which engineer an un-hack to the system aren't going to tear down the social license for super.
