Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

But based on the current awards—not the modern ones but the existing awards that are out there—a lot of the arrangements are industry funds. I am not against industry funds—I worked for them for a number of years—and I am not against corporate funds, as they are called. But there is an important issue to do with how the default fund is selected. That is a really important issue, given that so many people stick with the default for quite a period of time. You can get into a debate about who has better returns, and that is probably going to be something that is still unfolding over the year. I would be interested to know when the APRA stuff is likely to come out—just a likely date; I will not hold you to it, of course. Then it comes down to this choice. Once someone is in a default fund, they can choose to take their money somewhere else. They have to watch the exit fees and all those sorts of things. They are important criteria when you select the default fund. The optimal process would probably be to allow the enterprise agreement to include the flexibility to select the default fund.

You would probably say that there is a process to look at those issues. The problem is that there are a lot of businesses that do not have an enterprise agreement that would be covered by an award. That means that they are going to have the superannuation fund forced on them through the award. Is that true for businesses that do not have enterprise agreements? Each worker would be covered by the relevant award. If there is no enterprise agreement, then obviously the award would therefore force them into the default fund. Is that true?