Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was a bill based on shoddy research, driven by an ideological agenda.

Documents obtained by my office under freedom of information reveal the extraordinary lengths the government went to in order to build a case for this legislation. They provided no performance bases or rationale when selecting several funds for the Attorney-General's Department to investigate. They relied upon a sample analysis that was never intended as a representative sample. It was a select reading of enterprise agreements tied to the funds that government wanted to go after. Sadly, this bill did pass, clearing the way for the poorly-performing retail funds to seize the financial futures of thousands of Australians. The retail funds have regularly been caught out delivering poor performance and higher fees.

Senator Hume interjecting—