Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I speak to the Governance of Australian Government Superannuation Schemes Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, a rather bureaucratic title for a bill that is all about reducing duplication and overlap. The merger of ComSuper and the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, or CSC, that this bill makes possible is important because it will reduce duplication and overlap in the administration of the Australian government's superannuation schemes.

CSC is currently ComSuper's only client, and giving CSC greater control over the administration of the schemes for which it is a trustee is consistent with good governance principles. As someone with experience in local government, I understand the importance of having the right institutions and the right administrative arrangements for the task at hand. Too much bureaucracy inevitably leads to waste through duplication of functions, and certainly something that this government is very cognisant of is making life much more simple and removing duplication. That is why our smaller government agenda is so important: we need to deliver greater value to taxpayers through better services delivered faster and at lower cost. We have reduced the number of government bodies by 286 so far, achieving savings of $1.4 billion. Part of that effort has been in reducing Public Service numbers—from September 2013 to February 2015 the number has been reduced 17,300—many of these through natural attrition. In response to the shadow minister's comments earlier on, most of that number of public servants was put on during the previous Labor administration.

That is not to say that public servants do not do valuable work—they do—but we have a duty to taxpayers to ensure that the business of government is conducted as efficiently and effectively as possible. Our smaller government agenda works in tandem with our efforts to reduce green and red tape. Since coming to government we have made a raft of changes. We have taken decisions and made changes that will reduce the regulatory cost burden by $2.45 billion. As I get around my electorate, one of the great topics that people, particularly those in small business, bring up with me is the amount of time it takes—and the cost to their business and their way of life—wading through different levels of government control. The red and green tape reduction agenda of this government is being very much appreciated, particularly by people who are involved in small business.

While I am a believer in small government, I am also a bit of a supporter of decentralised government, particularly for those agencies engaged in delivering services to industries that have their home in the regions. A great example of that is the Cotton CRC that is based at Narrabri. It has, I think, 16 or 18 direct employees and the flow-on effect in the wider region is large, not only through the many people who are employed but through the increased productivity from the on-the-ground research and knowledge being performed in the region rather than in a centralised location, and that is very pertinent. Importantly, all of the functions currently performed by ComSuper will continue to be performed following the merger. Benefits will continue to be paid to members of the civilian and military superannuation schemes and those benefits will not change as a result of this bill.

On superannuation more broadly, the government is delivering stability to the Australian superannuation system and security for Australia's retirees. That is something that, as I get around and speak to the self-funded retirees in my electorate, is of great concern. Stability and security were missing under Labor, and they would now have Australians believe that they can be trusted. But the Australian people are cleverer than that. In 2013 they promised that for five years they would not make any changes to super, and with barely six months of 2015 gone they have already announced two additional taxes on super.

This bill also makes changes to allow costs of administration to be met by members of the Public Sector Superannuation Accumulation Plan. Fees are a common way of paying for administration in accumulation-style superannuation funds in the general community. The changes in this bill will bring the PSSAP into line with community practice and the arrangements for parliamentarians like me who entered parliament after 2004. That is something that I might put on the record for anyone out there, particularly in the press gallery—that any member who joined this place after 2004 is not in a superannuation pension scheme—despite how many times that gets explained. By ensuring that the costs of administration are more appropriately met by fund members rather than the Commonwealth, the measure will save $26.8 million over four years from 2015-16, which can be used to fund other priorities.

The merger of ComSuper and CSC is the next natural step in a process to streamline the governance of the Australian government's civilian and military superannuation schemes that started in 2011, when CSC was established, merging three trustee bodies into one. I am happy to acknowledge that that was a sensible thing to do—a rare moment in the normally chaotic years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. The creation of CSC improved the efficiency of the trustee arrangements and enables CSC to harness economies of scale in its investment functions. Bringing the administration of the schemes for which it is trustee more directly under CSC's control will further streamline the governance arrangements. I commend this bill to the House.

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