Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator Hanson:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

"The need for a comprehensive investigation into the political and financial relationships between the Albanese Labor Government, industry superannuation funds, and unions, and their impact on government policy, specifically regarding net-zero targets, wind and solar energy, and nuclear energy."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for a comprehensive investigation into the political and financial relationships between the Albanese Labor Government, industry superannuation funds, and unions, and their impact on government policy, specifically regarding net-zero targets, wind and solar energy, and nuclear energy.

Follow the money. If you want to know why the Australian Labor Party is indulging in a childish scare campaign against nuclear energy, follow the money. This pathetic Labor scare campaign is an insult to the intelligence of every Australian. If Labor was truly against nuclear energy on principle, it would cancel any arrangements to purchase nuclear powered submarines and it would dismantle the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney.

However, we know Labor has no principles other than doing the bidding of the union thugs who fund them. This appears to be the ultimate reason behind Labor's antinuclear scare campaign. Labor provides billions of dollars of grants, subsidies and incentives to support renewable energy investments. Between Labor and the coalition, this has cost taxpayers $29 billion over the past 10 years.

Labor enforces regulations and mandates which enforce a guaranteed market for renewable energy. Industry superannuation funds controlled by Labor's union bosses invest heavily in these renewable projects, and why not? They are underwritten by taxpayers, thanks to Labor, guaranteeing a lucrative return for these union-controlled super funds. These lucrative returns are then used to support the Labor Party with large donations. It was no coincidence that in December 2023 union-controlled industry super funds demanded even more favourable investment conditions, underwritten by taxpayers, for the transition to net zero. These funds include Cbus, chaired by former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan, and AustralianSuper, which has close ties to former Labor prime minister Paul Keating. I'll highlight a few more union affiliations amongst the current Labor cabinet: Bill Shorten and the AWU, Tony Burke and the SDA in New South Wales, Don Farrell and the SDA in South Australia, Katy Gallagher and the CPSU, Pat Conroy and the CFMEU and the AMWU, and Richard Marles and the ACTU.

It's insidious how much unions have infiltrated this parliament and how this compromises good government. This is a scam paid for by the Australian taxpayer through subsidies and by Australian consumers through their record higher energy bills. Labor and its union masters don't want this corrupt gravy train derailed by nuclear energy. That's why they've come out swinging against it while once again showing their absolute contempt for the intelligence of the Australian people. Fortunately, Australians are smart enough not to fall for Labor's pathetic scare campaign of three-eyed fish memes.

Australians understand that nuclear power is safely used at 450 sites around the world in 32 countries. Australia is the only advanced economy of the world which doesn't make use of this proven technology, despite having at least a quarter of the planet's proven uranium reserves. This important natural advantage to Australia is being squandered. It makes absolutely no sense that Australia, one of the world's most energy-rich countries, is facing energy shortages this winter and has some of the highest energy prices in the world—that is, unless you follow the money trail.

Labor and the unions are orchestrating a massive scam on the Australian people, and the price of it will be our economy and our standard of living. This scam and the destruction it is causing must be exposed and stopped. Nuclear energy is the beginning, but uranium is just one of Australia's natural advantages. We also have abundant reserves of coal and natural gas. All of these natural advantages should be utilised in an independent energy policy that prioritises affordability and reliability over climate change ideology. The Prime Minister's inability to stand up to unions has been exposed by thugs like John Setka. The Prime Minister's weakness has been further exposed by Senator Payman, who has escaped any serious sanction for crossing the floor against Labor's policy last week.

Why are we allowing this union-Labor renewable scam to happen? Is it to arrest climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions? If it is, that's not working. Global emissions continue to rise, another indicator of the union-Labor renewable scam.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

What a ridiculous motion it is that has been put forward by Senator Hanson today. Of course we, as a government, listen to super funds, our nation's biggest investors. They are custodians of our biggest investment portfolios and custodians of Australians' retirement savings. Of course we listen to industry superannuation companies. Of course we listen to unions. The truth is that it is those opposite, the coalition and One Nation, who are not listening—not listening to communities, not listening to scientists about climate change, not listening to industry and not listening to workers.

Let's take, for example, this nuclear fantasy of the opposition leader, Mr Dutton: seven nuclear reactors at the sites of existing or former coal-fired power stations around the nation, including in my own home state of WA, near Collie, at the site of Muja Power Station. What we have in the coalition's nuclear power plan is a plan that will throw our emissions targets in the bin. It is a plan that will divert investment from cheaper, shovel-ready renewable electricity generation projects. They will simply be put in the bin under this kind of proposal, because it will divert investment and waste precious time—precious time that industry super funds, the Business Council of Australia and workers in these communities right around Australia know that we don't have, and precious time that we must spend getting on with the job of committing to and implementing a transition to renewable energy.

Even if you were a climate change denier, the truth is that the coalition's nuclear power plan is still slower and more expensive than the energy plans already in place. The coalition admit that coal-fired power is coming to an end by the end of the decade, yet at the same time they want to wait decades for nuclear reactors which will cost more than renewable energy can be built for today.

Take the community of Collie in Western Australia, for example. They already have a plan to manage the transition from coal through the Collie Just Transition working group. It is a place where government bodies, unions, business and local community organisations have all come together to produce the plan to manage the end of coal power in the community of Collie. It's critical for our whole state, the state of WA, that they be given a chance to get this right and to do this job, because without it the electricity reliability of our whole state is in jeopardy. That is what those opposite seek to do: jeopardise the power future of the whole state of Western Australia. Collie Just Transition have a plan in place that calls for investment in renewable energy, retraining programs and embedded consultation with the local community. They have new industries that they are working with. They are working today to replace the jobs that will go when coal-fired power closes by the end of the decade, in 2029. The community of Collie cannot wait until 2040.

So the motion before us today names something, frankly, that is patently obvious. Of course as a good Labor government we're working with industry super funds, with unions and with communities to protect our nation's future.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) | Link to this | Hansard source

Every political party has problems, but the problem that the Labor Party has is the same problem it had a century ago, which was identified by Alfred Deakin when he said that the problem Labor has is that it's beholden to vested interests. The mother of all vested interests today is the union between the Labor Party, the trade unions themselves and the super funds. This enormous conflict of interest can be seen in personal terms, in flesh and blood, here in this building, where you see the National President of the Labor Party, Mr Wayne Swan, who is also the chair of the Cbus super fund. The most remarkable part of this is that, when Labor announced a dodgy housing policy which was designed to allow the super funds to take over the housing market, the only organisation that said that they would put their members' hard-earned savings into it was Cbus. Cbus is the only one that said it would do it, with Mr Swan at the apex of the Labor Party and the Cbus fund itself.

This is all about underwriting Labor's campaigning capacity and capability. In the last year $40 million was sent from the super fund off to the union and the campaigners. What was the first act of the financial services minister, Stephen Jones, in this parliament? His first act was to roll back the disclosures and the transparency that were passed in the last parliament so that people could see when their super fund was giving money to a union. What did Mr Jones say? He said: 'No, we don't want that. We don't want people to see it. We want it to be a secret.' Helpfully, the coalition worked with the crossbench to roll back that disgusting attempt to cover up $40 million in payments from super funds to unions and Labor affiliated organisations.

This is a huge problem for our country—to have one of the governing bodies over a barrel to these interests. So many of the bills of this parliament are designed to funnel more money off to these super funds. When you look at that $40 million, it's a lot of money in campaign terms. AustralianSuper, Cbus, Hesta, Hostplus, TWUSUPER and First Super have all given more than a million dollars in the last year.

The idea of any organisation arguing that any particular form of zero emissions energy is bad is fundamentally unscientific. You can have an argument about how you want to do it in different ways, but the idea that any of these funds will get further involved in politics should be very scary given they're already very involved here in this building. I think the Australian people expect that the laws that we enact here will be enforced. I don't think that's unreasonable. There was a law on the books that said these funds must operate only for their members—not for the big unions, not for any other political organisation and not for the big banks or the financiers. They're supposed to be holding this money in trust. These are trusts, and they have very clear laws. It's about the best financial interests of members, not the best financial interests of unions. This is a major problem that we are all sitting on here in this building—that the prudential regulator, APRA, is not enforcing the law.

I was very pleased to see at Senate estimates only a few weeks ago that APRA had announced that they were investigating one fund, or maybe a number of funds, for breaches of the best financial interest duty. I asked whether it was appropriate for the fund called First Super to have made four $700,000 payments to the CFMEU. APRA said that, because they have secrecy provisions, they couldn't answer on the floor of the Senate estimates meeting. But I expect that those laws will be enforced and that APRA will set a standard and say to these funds, 'You cannot give your money that belongs to the workers to the unions or to the banks, because that is not in the best interests of the workers.'

This parliament created this scheme of superannuation. It is not a very successful scheme. Most people will be on the pension beyond the middle of this century. It has been very successful at enriching bloodsuckers, leeches and rent seekers, who have made a huge amount of money in the financial institutions but mostly in the unions. This is keeping the unions afloat and it is a disgrace.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens reject this motion. It is deeply misguided. I'd love to see a government wholeheartedly commit to solar and wind. I'd love to see a government that rejects in full the nuclear industry, including nuclear reactors on Australian and US submarines. I'd love to see a government that would actually get us to meet the Paris climate targets. But that government is not the Albanese government. In fact, if you want to look at the Albanese Labor government's influence and the connection with some of the superannuation funds, look at how they have continued the coalition's goal to make Australia a top 10 global weapons exporter—an obscene plan. Look at how many funds in the superannuation industry are supporting that unethical goal. The militarisation of Australia and becoming an arm of the US's military industry have a corrosive effect on this place and on our society. That's also true when it comes to superannuation. No better example can be found than in the recent reporting by the ABC about nominally ethical superannuation programs that are, in fact, investing in foreign arms companies and some of the least ethical weapons on the planet, such as nuclear weapons and white phosphorus.

Australians who wanted to invest in a peaceful and ethical future have, without their knowledge, seen their superannuation funds invest millions and millions of dollars in some of the worst weapons companies on the planet and in some of the most unethical human-rights-abusing weapons that are created.

All those voters who told the Albanese government at the last election they wanted a different, more compassionate government haven't got what they've asked for. They haven't got what they've invested in. Instead they've got a bunch of warmongers who are happy to carry on Morrison's legacy. This is most clearly seen at a political level in the AUKUS mess—a complete embrace by the Labor Party of the nuclear weapons industry and the nuclear cycle in our political space. The government sets the standard, and the standard that this government sets and their very low standard on weapons and unethical investment have been embraced by the superannuation industry.

The ABC are now reporting that so-called ethical super funds have holdings of more than $26 million in shares for companies involved in nuclear weapons, including BAE Systems, Textron, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies. I doubt anyone who ticked the 'ethical' box wanted to see their superannuation funds invested in making doomsday nuclear weapons. Some of the so-called ethical super programs invested in companies like Rheinmetall, Hanwha and Austal. Do you know what those companies have in common? They in turn invest in the Labor Party. These are weapons companies that have added some $2 million to the ALP in public donations over the last decade. So, in a roundabout way, those people who are trying to invest in socially conscious superannuation were not only seeing their investments end up in the hands of some of the global bottom feeders of the weapons industry but those weapons companies in turn have handed the money over to the ALP in a deeply unethical moral spiral that both the weapons manufacturers and the ALP are involved in.

We've heard of 'pinkwashing' and 'greenwashing'. Now we have something new brought to you by the ALP and some parts of the superannuation industry—'war-washing'. That's where they seek to take money from well-minded people and take votes from well-minded people who want to end global war, who don't want to see investments in the nuclear arms industry and don't want to see investments in the global arms trade, and instead they get superannuation funds that throw their money at those industries, and a government that supports them and then takes money from those very same industries in turn.

This motion suggests a conspiracy between superannuation providers and the government that does not exist, but what does exist is a government that's setting the lowest moral standards so that others fall—moral standards based on bedrock. Why would superannuation providers not invest in arms dealers when this government's own investment scheme, the Future Fund, is also investing in arms dealers? Some of those arms dealers include Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer that is currently profiting from a genocide. This government has set the standard at a new low.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this urgency motion today about the need for a comprehensive investigation into the political and financial relationships between the Albanese Labor government, industry funds, super funds and unions, and their impact on government policy, specifically regarding net zero targets and wind and solar energy. There is nothing that encapsulates the long march of the left more than the takeover of private industry by superannuation funds, because let me tell you that superannuation is communism.

I've got to be honest here. It's not often I'd say this, but I think the other side of the chamber sometimes has a better understanding of capital than this side of the chamber does. I'm in this party because I believe in capitalism. I believe in people who'll risk their own capital. I don't believe in free markets. I believe in the risk-reward paradigm. I'm in very good company when I say that, because no lesser person than Sir Robert Menzies himself said in the last paragraph of the 'forgotten people' speech, 'We should not go back to the old and selfish notions of laissez faire … there will be … more control, not less.' I want you to think about and ponder that. There will be more control, not less of it. The reason Robert Menzies was so on the mark was that he foresaw the future. He knew that we are always at the threat of the communists and the Marxists who are always trying to override our personal responsibilities. There is nothing that overrides our personal responsibility more than taking 12 per cent of a worker's wage and giving it to someone they've never met—and they may or may not get it back when they're 67. That's not capitalism; that is communism.

The big mistake that we made in the eighties was to sign up with Hawke and Keating. This is where I come back to understanding capital. You see, they understood, back in the eighties, what they were doing when they introduced compulsory superannuation, because they knew that if you control capital, you control industry. Today superannuation controls over $3 trillion in capital. Do you want to know why they supported the 'yes' vote in the Voice referendum? Because they control the capital. Do you want to know why they're mandating renewable energy targets? Because they control the capital.

What we've got are industry super funds that work together to combine their votes, with one proxy voter at an AGM. They control over 20 per cent of the vote at major blue-chip companies. Add to that another 10 per cent of retail funds, which are often controlled through BlackRock and Vanguard. BlackRock is run by a bloke by the name of Larry Fink, a well-known leftie. You've now got capital controlled by the Left.

That is not what a true protectionist believes in. A true protectionist believes in empowering families and individuals. That is what true protectionism is. There is no better way to protect the family and the individual than to let the worker keep their wages, because they know better than anyone how to spend their own money. If they're not looking after their money—and that's what true capitalism is, when the person who earns the money looks after it—you're giving it to these unaccountable authorities, whether it's the government and their taxation, the bureaucrats and the way they spend money or the superannuation funds who pull out a lazy $30 billion a year in fees just to shuffle paper and gamble with your earnings; it's also corporate executives, I might add.

One of the things we have to realise is that large corporations are not capitalists. If I had a dollar for every time some CEO drove a company into the ground and then got paid a golden handshake on his way out! That is not capitalism; that is crony capitalism or socialism. Small to medium business, when it's being run by the people who actually own the capital and control the capital, is true capitalism.

What we've got now is the result of 40 years of a neoliberal takeover, whereby the individuals and the families have had their rights destroyed. We have these lunatic policies like renewables based off shoddy models that at the estimates hearing this morning even the head of the CSIRO couldn't explain. He couldn't explain or didn't even know what assumption were used in that GenCost report. This is the problem. We are being controlled by people who take no risk. They basically put the risk onto the individual and families. That is why I've always believed a true politician should be fighting for the rights of the individual and families, not smarmy superannuation funds and their crazy ideologies.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Superannuation has become an institution in Australia, one that has not been reviewed for almost 15 years. The superannuation pot of gold is now valued at $3.5 trillion in an economy that is valued at only $2.6 trillion. While I say 'pot of gold', 'slush fund' may be a better description—in the hands of some funds, anyway. Industry super funds are distorting the economy and using their huge wealth to invest politically rather than in the best interests of their members. The renewable energy monster currently devouring our economy and our beautiful countryside is substantially funded by industry super funds. These political investment decisions are made by boards that contain up to five members drawn from the union bosses that fund the service. Investment is made in a way that supports the Australian Labor Party's political agendas. That is clear.

Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, the man who had a fair bit to do with starting superannuation, has warned that super funds will start asking for board seats from companies in which they take a substantial position so they're union controlled. Two investment funds tried to take over Origin Energy last year and led the company toward sounder investment strategies. Australian Super drastically increased a stake in the company to vote down the proposal. According to an article in the Financial Review:

… super funds' decarbonisation commitments could push them to put directors on boards, if their other attempts at engaging with companies to drive down their emissions failed.

Really? Is this the job of superannuation funds now? Social engineering?

Industry super funds may force targeted companies to employ union members or agree to union sweetheart deals. They may force target companies to follow the woke globalist Labor Party agenda, such as DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion, although industry super fund CBUS has gone one further and added a B, for 'belonging', designed apparently to welcome employees who are Arthur one day and Martha the next. Despite LBGTQIA+ turning into an alphabet soup of debasement, REST are proud to be an ally of Pride Month and all that goes with it. Super funds can afford this non-commercial activity because they have a river of gold and cash flowing into their coffers every year from members who falsely think their super fees are being spent in their own interests. Silly them. In fact, super funds sent $13 million to the ALP in the lead-up to the last election; CBUS alone accounted for $1.5 million of that, or more than a tenth.

Direct payment is not the only way super funds are fed back to the unions, then on to the ALP. Industry funds pay unions to run training programs with very generous payments. It's not quite a protection racket, but it's along the same lines. Board members on super funds also receive very generous salaries, which are then sent back to the union and form part of the $17 million paid by unions to the ALP. CBUS, for instance, pays its board members $457,000 per annum each year, which makes REST look positively reasonable at only $165,000. This explains why, during COVID, when the Morrison government made a very sensible suggestion to allow everyday Australians a chance to use just a little of their super to get through COVID, the ALP lost its mind. Their super fund donors were unimpressed with having to give up what turned out to be $80 billion of their $3.5 trillion back to the people who gave it to them. Apparently, pride parades and social engineering don't fund themselves.

The misuse of funds by superannuation companies raises a serious question: is superannuation reducing wages? That would mean there is no direct financial benefit to the worker making the contribution. This is theft. The Grattan Institute has produced data to show that it is, in fact, the worker who pays for this so-called employer contribution, in reduced wages and reduced employment opportunities. It's time for a detailed inquiry into this boondoggle to ensure that workers are not losing from this system.

Sue Lines (President) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Hanson be agreed to.