Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I foreshadow to members of the House that Labor will not be supporting this bill. Current arrangements for self-managed superannuation funds limit the number of members to four. I understand it is the government's proposition to extend that to six members on the basis that it would provide more flexibility.

We deliberately did not form a position on this. We had some concerns about this matter, when it was first raised with the opposition, but referred it to a Senate inquiry to flush out the reviews of consumer representatives, self-managed superannuation fund representatives and their advisers. On the basis of the evidence that we saw before that Senate committee, we're particularly mindful of the evidence given by Super Consumers Australia, who pointed out that the extension from four to six opened up a great risk for harm to members of the superannuation fund.

Let me explain what I mean by that. If you have a number of children within the same self-managed superannuation fund as their elderly parents, members of that fund are going to have very different interests. In fact, it's very difficult to judge the best interests of each and every member of that fund individually. For example, if you have elderly parents whose house or business is contained within the superannuation fund, the interest of young children who are also members of that superannuation fund is in the maintenance of the assets. The interest of the elderly parents is going to be in the liquidation and realisation of those assets. As Super Consumers Australia pointed out, this measure runs the very great risk of leading to consumer harm to some members of those funds.

While it sounds good at the 30,000-feet level, when you drill down and look at the potential for this to create harm and abuse, you see the risks are too great. For that reason, Labor will not be supporting the bill.

Debate interrupted.

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