Senate debates

Wednesday, 16 June 2021

Bills

Treasury Laws Amendment (More Flexible Superannuation) Bill 2020, Treasury Laws Amendment (Self Managed Superannuation Funds) Bill 2020, Treasury Laws Amendment (Your Future, Your Super) Bill 2021; Second Reading

7:53 pm

Photo of Andrew BraggAndrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thankfully, we have people in this place who will stand up for the workers. You just want to do the bidding of the unions and we are trying to get a better deal for workers. There are people in this place who want to throw this whole system in the bin. We don't want to do that; we want to fix this. You have a vested interest in making this thing work.

Senator Sterle interjecting—

The longer it doesn't work, the longer there will be microscopes on scrutiny on this scheme, it is being busted. It's breaking the budget. It gets no-one off the pension. The fees cost an arm and a leg. We are trying to get those fees under control. We are trying to make this scheme work. I don't think that's too ideological. The regulations will be made by the minister and, like everything else in this place where I've had an opportunity to make a contribution—

Senator Sterle interjecting—

I don't think that the regulator should be making these regulations. It's important that ministers who are accountable to this chamber make the regulations and that they can be disallowed. That is yet to be established. But they must be comparable, they must be easy to understand and it must be easy for workers and members to compare super funds. This performance testing, which Labor and the unions are so afraid of, will be an important feature, I think, going forward.

Let's finish on the point about the best financial interest duty. Again, Labor doesn't want super funds to work in the interests of workers, which is just extraordinary. Around $100 billion a year flows into the funds, of which $30 billion comes out in fees. By 2030, $30 million will be paid to the unions. This is the cash cow for the unions, and they're all here, all the union people who have been appointed to the Senate to defend the union interests. It really is pathetic. I reserve my criticism for the directors as well and for the employer groups that have got their snouts in the trough. Super is the best thing they ever invented, because it keeps them all alive. There's no other purpose for employer groups and unions, and the banks have been just as bad. They have been proven by the Hayne royal commission to have had their snouts in the trough and to have too often put the interests of shareholders before those of members.

These are the words that Labor don't want to hear, but the fact is that the whole system has underperformed. It is a system that should have had more safeguards to protect workers and to protect people's money, but that wasn't done by the Labor Party at the time because they were so desperate to hand over the cash to the unions and the banks. That's what Keating does; that's why Keating is still so defensive about this scheme. He comes out and attacks common old backbenchers, which is a sign of his defensiveness.

This scheme is not working and we want to try to get it on track. The best financial interest duty is the centrepiece of this bill, and my view is that reversing the onus, to make sure the trustees can demonstrate that the money that they're paying to the unions, or for directors' fees, or for advertising, or for political donations, or to the banks or related parties, is in the members' interests. They have to prove that, otherwise why are they doing it? Now that is reasonable. There will be record-keeping arrangements put in place, and APRA will have to enforce this law.

I have to say again, for the record, that it's regrettable that we need to put a new, tougher fiduciary-style duty in place. There is already a best interest duty and there is already a sole-purpose test, but, as we've seen from Senate estimates, APRA has presided over a system which has allowed workers' money to be stolen by the super funds, the banks and the industry funds, and that is wrong. So, yes, the best financial interest duty will clarify. It will tidy up. The trustees, collectively and individually, will know that they can no longer take away the workers' money and waste it on union boondoggles or send it off to the banks. They can't do it anymore. But APRA will have to enforce that law vigorously.

If this bill passes this chamber, I will make it my personal objective to ensure that this law is properly enforced, because we've had 30 years of just wasting money. Who could imagine a scheme that was concocted 30 years ago in Canberra—whose modelling was thrown out because it was done on a coaster, a scheme that was done without a framework, without a proper objective in place—could be a scheme that has taken 10 per cent of people's wages, that has no prospect of ever becoming net positive to budget, no prospect of ever getting most people off the pension and, if Labor had their way, no prospect of ever really getting the fees down?

So the only plan to fix super is this plan. It's the only plan. Today we see the end of Labor's policy integrity. They are now only a party of vested interests defending the tired old union movement, and I cannot wait to hear the pathetic contributions in all the speeches that are to be read tonight.

A quorum having been called and the bells being rung—

Senator Bragg interjecting—

Senator Sterle interjecting—

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