Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This bill from this government is about a closed shop. It is anticompetitive. It is putting the workers last and politics first. Let's face it: those on the other side have 100 per cent of their front bench who are members of the union. Seventy per cent of their caucus are members of the union. At a Labor conference 50 per cent of the votes go to the union. But in Australia only 12 per cent of the private sector workforce are members of the union and only 18 per cent of the general workforce are members of the union.

Why will you not give the workers of Australia a free choice about who their default super fund will be? Industry super funds are in the pockets of the union. Who knows this best? The Minister for Industrial Relations and Workplace Relations. He knows this best, because he was a director himself of an industry super fund and now he is the fox in charge of the henhouse.

The Productivity Commission has made a recommendation that this government extend default super funds much more broadly than it currently does with industry super funds. We on this side know that if we get our chance in government we will extend default super funds to any MySuper-compliant super fund. This is about allowing the market to determine where the workers choose to place their super funds. We have $1.4 trillion in superannuation in this country. That is a massive amount of money. The workers of Australia should have the right, the choice and the freedom to determine where their money goes.

Choice and freedom are essential to the Liberal Party's DNA. It does not matter whether it is in health, where private health insurance is being cut by the government. It does not matter whether it is in education, where you seek to deny funding to private schools, independent and Catholic. It does not matter whether it is in workplace relations and the superannuation industry.

Many of my colleagues on this side have spoken passionately and with conviction about the rort that is currently taking place before our very eyes—a rort that is in the interest only of the union movement and not of the workers of Australia and a rort that is against the Productivity Commission's very recommendations. With some important legislation before this House you would think there would be proper scrutiny. You would think that we would have weeks to look at the legislation and to consult the stakeholders. We were given less than 24 hours to look at this legislation. Shame on you! Shame on the member for Maribyrnong! Our parliamentary draftsmen did not even have time to draft the amendments that we wanted to bring forward.

Why are you hiding from scrutiny? You know why the member for Maribyrnong is hiding from scrutiny. He does not want the Australian people to know about this cover-up. He does not want the Australian people to know that it is his mates in the union movement who are the ones who will benefit. You do not want members of the Australian public—or indeed more than $10 million people who are in industry super funds—to know that industry super funds typically ask for more than 50 per cent of their directors to come from the unions, to be nominated by the unions so that these directors can supplement their incomes with a directorship of these industry super funds.

We know that Fair Work Australia has been discredited because of the Thomson affair. We know that of the last 10 appointments to Fair Work Australia, between December 2009 and December 2011, eight had union backgrounds.

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