Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion for the Senate to take note of the letter from the Chairman of the Productivity Commission, relating to an order for the production of documents concerning superannuation funds, that has just been tabled.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This letter, which was tabled in the Senate today, is just another example of a govern­ment that steadfastly refuses to be account­able to the parliament and to the Senate in particular. It is a further demonstration of a government that is going to new lows when it comes to being accountable to the Senate, even though Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised after the last election that this would be a new era of openness and transparency in government.

Under government's of both persuasions, whether it was the Hawke government, the Keating government or the Howard govern­ment, statutory agencies like the ACCC, the Australian National Audit Office or a range of others, would regularly comply with orders for the production of documents, including orders for the production of documents that were not yet in existence but had to be created. These documents covered a whole range of issues, whether it was in relation to tobacco policy matters or to any other of a whole range of diverse issues. Incidentally, many of those motions for production of documents were initiated by crossbench senators, whether it was the Democrats, or Senator Fielding, or Senator Xenophon and, indeed, some of them were even initiated by people in the then opposition, such as Senator Conroy. In those days government's of both persuasions would ensure that statutory agencies were in a position to comply with the orders of the Senate.

In November 2010 the Senate agreed to an order that there be laid on the table no later than 31 May 2011 a report by the Product­ivity Commission on the design of a process for the selection and ongoing review of the superannuation funds that were to be included in modern awards or enterprise agreements as default funds, with the requirement that—and I am just summarising here—the process be based on objective criteria and evidence, subject to systematic review and, essentially, that the process be transparent and competitive. And of course the current process is not objective, it is not transparent and it is not competitive. Don't take my word for it. That was the conclusion of the Labor government just over a year ago.

Just over a year ago the Labor government released a policy on superannuation in which they promised to refer to the Productivity Commission the task of designing a process that is open, transparent and competitive when it comes to the selection of default superannuation funds. However, after the election Prime Minister Julia Gillard appointed Bill Shorten as the Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation and he is very unenthusiastic about doing anything that would remove the current closed shop, anti-competitive arrangements that are in place when it comes to the selection of default superannuation funds under modern awards. This process is quite disgraceful both in substance and process. We passed an order here in November asking for this report to be provided by the end of May 2011. Initially we got some sort of informal advice that 'we don't really think that we can do this; we don't really think that we can comply with this order unless we have got a direction from the minister to do so.' Of course, the minister wants to be able to hold on to this anticompetitive advantage for union dominated industry super funds for as long as possible, and so the minister was not going to say to the Productivity Commission, 'We want you to do this.' But the Senate said to the Productivity Commiss­ion, 'We want you to do this,' and there is a long history of orders of this nature being complied with in the past by agencies like the Productivity Commission.

So the Senate passed earlier this year, in February, another order and we asserted that the Senate has the authority, consistent with past practice and under the Constitution, to require that this information be provided and we confirmed the requirement for this information to be provided by 31 May. What did we hear after that? Nothing. This letter is the first formal advice that we are getting from the government about their response to this order of the Senate, and it is a response saying, 'We're not going to do it and we don't care about what you, the Senate, have ordered us to do. We don't care about the motion that was passed by the Senate ordering us to provide this information. Don't worry about a deadline of 31 May as 10 August is early enough to get back and say that, by the way, we're not going to do this sort of thing.' This is a constant pattern. We had a conversation earlier today and yesterday and Senator Ludlam raised the fact that questions on notice had not been answered for 250 days. I had some questions that had not been answered for more than 150 days. And here we have this refusal to comply with the deadline that is set by the Senate. It was a deadline set in November for the end of May. You would think that was a pretty reasonable deadline, yet this govern­ment cannot comply with a deadline set in November for the end of May. This is the pattern of a government that refuses to be accountable to the Senate. They completely do not take us seriously.

This is a pretty serious issue and related to this is this impasse now in relation to a whole series of orders. There is a whole series of orders, for example, whereby we sought information about the commodity price and production volume assumptions that were at the basis of the mining tax revenue estimates and the government refused outright to provide that information. Supposedly, as part of the agreement between the government and the Greens and as part of the agreement between the govern­ment and some of the key Independents in the other place, there was going to be this process where, whenever there was a dispute between the Senate and the government about matters of public interest disclosure and a Senate order had votes on the floor against the decision of a minister, the Information Commissioner would arbitrate on the release of relevant documents and report to both houses. That was a year ago. The government entered into this agreement and we have now got a whole plethora of orders on the books whereby the Senate has sought to refer matters to the Information Commissioner for him to arbitrate as to whether it is going to be in the public interest or not for certain information to be released. 'No,' the Information Commissioner says, 'I can't do it. I can't do the job'—refuses to do the job. Clearly, this agreement between the government and the Greens is not worth the paper it is written on.

In the meantime working people across Australia continue to be channelled into default superannuation funds that are identified through a process that is not competitive, that is not objective, that is not transparent and that has the risk of people being channelled into underperforming funds. The best way to maximise value for consumers across Australia is by having a proper competitive framework in place. Look at the recent example of the MTAA arrangements where the MTAA was identified as a default fund on a particular award and where some union trustees on the MTAA fund went to Fair Work Australia and asked for the MTAA to be selected as a default fund without declaring the fact that they were actually trustees on that fund. They were going to Fair Work Australia in their capacity as union delegates to ask for a particular fund to be included as a default fund without declaring the fact that they were also trustees of the fund. This is completely inappropriate. The thing is that I have spoken to some very good people, senior leading people across industry super funds, in relation to these issues and some of them have said 'the reason we are selected as default funds is because we perform better'. That is great. And do you know what: if they were to perform better no doubt they would be selected as default superannuation funds in an open, competitive and transparent arrangement. I think that the minister's refusal to act on this clear pre-election commitment by the Labor Party before the last election is actually not doing industry super funds any favours because those that are good are being seen to be favoured and advantaged by a closed shop anticompetitive arrangement when, quite frankly, they would probably thrive in a proper open, competitive and transparent arrangement. If the government still agrees that the current arrangement is anticompetitive and a closed shop arrangement, why would you wait any longer now before you took any action? The reason the minister is not taking any action is that, quite frankly, he is conflicted when it comes to this. He supposedly wants to remove conflicts from financial service advice provision more generally but he does not seem to realise that he himself is conflicted when it comes to policy matters in this area.