Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Less than one per cent. For firms with approximately 150 employees, tenders for default superannuation have delivered total fees of between 0.84 and 0.96 per cent. So that is exactly in that aspirational category that the minister has been talking about, yet he does not seem to want to move in that direction. For firms with over 1,000 employees, tenders have delivered fees of between 0.58 and 0.83 per cent—yet again in that aspirational category.

From what I can gather, no rationale has been provided as to why particular funds are or are not appropriate as default funds in a given industry. The Industrial Relations Commission say, ‘Hands off; we are not going to make a determination as to why a particular fund might be good, bad or indifferent.’ Basically they would rely on the submission and the agreement, as I said before, of the big employer and employee organisations—a sweetheart deal would be done and then it would just get rubber-stamped by the industrial commission. They admit they do not undertake an analysis.

When you have a look at that, you find that, in the retail industry sector, the REST scheme is the monopoly scheme—it is the only scheme. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures indicate that in the minister’s and my home state of Tasmania 33,500 Tasmanians, or 16 per cent of the Tasmanian workforce, are employed in the retail trade. A lot of businesses at the moment would be putting their super money into a Tasmanian based—