Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

As we heard today, while all of this is happening, the government spends its time attacking Labor’s economic credibility and alleging that if Labor—the people who created the superannuation system in this country—get into government your superannuation will not be safe. While all this is happening, as we heard in question time today, the Future Fund, under the auspices of the Treasurer and the finance minister, has appointed as its global custodian a company called Northern Trust, which was the manager of the Enron staff superannuation scheme when Enron went under. That company has been found by the US District Court to have acted imprudently by complying with an Enron decision to freeze that fund for a month and prevent employees from shifting their superannuation investments out of the Enron company shares that they had been in. That company ultimately settled the legal actions against it by Enron employees to the tune of about $37 million.

In question time today it was extraordinary that it became clear that the Future Fund, in appointing Northern Trust, knew about its involvement in the Enron scandal but made no independent check as to whether this was a matter of concern before it was appointed. The Treasurer refused to say whether he knew anything about these matters and said: ‘It’s not my job; it’s independent. It’s at arm’s length. I have no role in this case.’ Of course, he is wrong. The Future Fund legislation contains a provision empowering him and the finance minister to issue directions to the Future Fund with respect to how it conducts its investment strategy. It allows them, for example, to issue directions about corporate governance issues, about how the Future Fund votes its shares, and they have done so. The question is, why have they not issued any guidelines with respect to ensuring that all parties who are contracted by the Future Fund to handle the money—the $50 billion that is already there—will do so prudently? So, while they are attacking us for allegedly threatening the superannuation of Australians, they are sitting there spending large sums of money advertising their virtues but not doing their basic job.

Finally, and most basically or most centrally of all, while all this is going on—while all their energies are going into focus groups about climate change leaflets that are to be sent to every household and new Work Choices ads superseding the old Work Choices ads—what is the reality being experienced by ordinary working families in this country? The reality is higher interest rates and fear that they will go higher again; increasing rents in many parts of Australia, in areas where people are being squeezed by much higher rents; continual increases in childcare costs, above and beyond inflation; doctors’ and dentists’ bills going up; and, significantly, because of the Prime Minister’s industrial relations legislation, the wages of significant sections of the workforce, like hospitality and retail workers, actually not even keeping pace with inflation. That is the reality for many working Australians out there. Those are the issues that they want their government to display an interest in.

We accept that in many cases the solutions to questions like rising petrol prises are not simple, but this government has totally got its eye off the ball. It is just concerned about scraping back into office and about advertising its virtues. So instead of the florid boasting from the Treasurer and instead of the claim by the Prime Minister that working people have never been better off, let us see some action on the things that matter to ordinary working families in this country.

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