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

That is exactly what you said, Minister. Either the government trusts its own legislation in terms of defining in legislation what a default fund product should look like—either the government agrees that it has come up with the right consumer protection features in their MySuper legislation, and then as soon as a product complies with the conditions of registration as a MySuper product then any of them should be adequate and appropriate and in the best interests of employees that are not making active choices in relation to their superannuation—or do you think that what you have done is inadequate? If so, you should go back to the drawing board. But to somehow say, 'We're going to let all of you register but even though all of you comply with our conditions of registration we are going to determine through a secretive process who is going to be allowed to compete and who is not allowed to compete,' is just completely inappropriate. It seeks to enshrine yet again an anti-competitive arrangement that, quite frankly, has been widely discredited for some time.

With those few words, I will talk through all of the amendments before moving them in turn because, procedurally, I will not be able to move them all together. Essentially, the objective of the amendments that I am about to move is to ensure that there can be proper and genuine competition between the great diversity of MySuper products which will be available from 1 July 2013, and that all Australians in default super can have the benefits of genuine competition between any MySuper product which complies with the government's requirements for registration as a MySuper product and not just with those select few which have been identified through a discredited process through Fair Work Australia.

Amendments (1) and (2) remove commencement dates for schedules that the coalition is opposing. Amendment (3) provides that the changes in the amendments will not commence until after the commencement of relevant schedules in the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Further MySuper and Transparency Measures) Act 2012—currently a bill before the parliament—that is, to link this amendment with what I have just talked about in terms of the availability of the government's own legislated MySuper default fund products.

Amendment (4) removes schedule 1. Schedule 1 at present amends the Fair Work Act to introduce a process under which the Fair Work Commission will review default fund terms in modern awards every four years. This will no longer be necessary if all MySuper products can be selected under any modern award as we believe should be the case.

Amendment (5) removes schedule 2, which currently institutes the expert panel as part of the Minimum Wage Panel in Fair Work Australia. Again, this is an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Consumer protection requirements have already been built into MySuper products—or so we have been led to believe by the government, which is clearly completely internally inconsistent with the way it has approached this.

Amendment (6) makes the substantive change to allow for any MySuper product to be available under all modern awards. Amendment (7) makes a minor consequential change to schedule 11.

Let me also point out that we are moving these amendments today to give the Senate the opportunity to do the right thing, to give the Senate the opportunity to help ensure that Australians who are not making active choices in relation to their superannuation arrangements can nevertheless benefit from the highest possible fund performance, the lowest possible fees and the best possible service and, because of competitive tensions that are engendered through genuine competition, this will lead to a maximisation of their retirement savings. That is the reason we are moving these amendments.

If these amendments are unsuccessful today, this will form part of the coalition policy going into the next election. Given that this government has been so belligerent in refusing to do the right thing in this area by continuing to protect the vested commercial interests of their friends in the union movement rather than do the right thing in the public interest, if this does not get fixed between now and the next election a future coalition government will fix it. With those few words I seek leave to move opposition amendments (4), (5) and (7) on sheet 7304 together.

Leave granted.

I move:

(4) Schedule 1, page 5 (line 1) to page 16 (line 4),

(5) Schedule 2, page 17 (line 1) to page 25 (line 13),

(7) Schedule 11, item 1, page 179 (line 19) to page 180 (line 10), Part 2 TO BE OPPOSED.