Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is an extraordinary surprise, as my colleague points out. Let me turn, therefore, to the opportunity which the introduction of MySuper products offered to introduce more competition. MySuper was recommended by the Cooper review, and the notion is to have low-cost, default superannuation products designed to meet the needs of those Australians who are not actively engaged with their own superannuation and do not make an active choice.

The government is currently in the process of legislating the consumer protection requirements, which it considers important in a default fund product, through the various pieces of MySuper legislation. These products are going to be very widely offered, including by retail superannuation funds. There is no reason at all that every product which qualifies as a MySuper product should not be able to compete freely in the default fund market. After all, if the policy objective is to ensure that somebody who defaults into a fund—that is, somebody who does not make an active choice but simply ends up in the fund specified by the modern award which covers his or her industry—ends up in a fund which is low-cost and tailored to his or her needs as a customer with low engagement, then by definition any MySuper product should fit the bill nicely. But the minister has a very different policy objective. His objective is to ensure that the current cosy arrangements stay in place so that the industry and public sector funds continue to get the lion's share of contributions—and they are doing so, of course, at the expense of people whose money is taken by force of legislation. That money is being used to contribute to the size and scale of economic entities largely controlled by union officials.

The Labor Party promised in 2010 that it was going to do something about this. It paid lip service to the principle of allowing greater competition and the choice of funds. Its 2010 policy contained a promise to introduce an open, transparent and competitive system with a process to select default funds under modern awards. Bill Shorten dragged his heels for as long as he could before reluctantly proceeding with this. Since that time—

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