Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I stated last night, it is obviously on the public record that Labor will be opposing the Treasury Laws Amendment (Improving Accountability and Member Outcomes in Superannuation Measures No. 1) Bill 2017 and the Superannuation Laws Amendment (Strengthening Trustee Arrangements) Bill, the STA Bill. As my colleagues have said before, we don't support the superannuation laws amendment bill. We'll be voting against it at the end of the second reading speeches. If it is still to proceed, I understand there is a substantial list of Labor amendments, many of which have already been foreshadowed, with which we will be trying to improve what we believe is a bad piece of legislation.

Again, we think this is a bad piece of legislation and it should be stopped immediately. But if it were to proceed to the committee stage, I want to urge the crossbenchers not to be railroaded by the government into a timetable or a time frame that isn't going to give the opportunity for proper consideration. I note that it appears that the Senate's business will almost entirely, in our next week of sitting, be taken up by dealing with the marriage bill. Again, that is something I support. I think that's a good thing to be doing. As a Senate, I think that's important work and it's important for us to reflect the will of the people in the postal survey. But it does mean that the amount of time we're going to have to be able to deal with what are, I think, quite extensive and detailed amendments is going to be quite limited. So I urge the crossbench not to feel the need—it's a bad bill and there is no need to rush a bad bill like this. There is no need for this to be done now, and it doesn't have to be done in this way. If you're going to pass this type of substantial legislation, especially flawed, substantial legislation, then I think it is important that you take as much time as possible to give it proper consideration.

I want to run through a little bit of history here, because we have been here before when it comes to legislation like this. At the heart of it is an ideological agenda being run by the government that is about the interests of the banking sector over the interests of the superannuation sector. You're dealing with an ideology here of conservativism that has always opposed superannuation in one form or another, and has always taken steps to oppose superannuation measures and proposals, as they've been outlined in the past. The proposition really is quite simple: do you keep the money in the pockets of mums and dads saving for their retirement, or is this simply more money that is going to be available to Australian bankers? Fundamentally, this legislation, and the ideology behind it, comes down to that simple question. It's banks or battlers.

The government has shamefully been on the side of the banks every step of the way. I want to remind the crossbench that we have been here before. In 2014, when Senator Cormann wanted to roll back the Future of Financial Advice laws, a crossbench coalition turned around and said, 'No way.' In 2015, when this issue last came up—it was the freshly minted Minister O'Dwyer from the other place who wanted to give superannuation to banks—the crossbench said, 'No way.'

And we've been here many, many times. Maybe the details change a little, but it's always the same battle—first from the Abbott government, now from the Turnbull government. It's always about them wanting to put more money in the pockets of bank shareholders and taking it away from a superannuation system that, despite being the envy of the world, is something they've never ideologically supported—more money into the pockets of bank executives, more money into bankers' bonus cheques.

When Minister O'Dwyer was first appointed to cabinet from the other place back in September 2015, it appeared that this policy which was going to result in boosting the incomes of bankers had always been on her priority list. Frankly, on top of her list of things to do was this legislation. Again, it all sounds reasonable and looks reasonable, but, when you look at the heart of what the legislation will do, it's about making it easier for banks to get their sticky fingers into retirement savings. And they do this by attacking industry superannuation funds, by attacking the superannuation industry.

Minister O'Dwyer was scurrying around the Senate in 2015 from office to office, introducing herself to the crossbench, most of whom had obviously never met the member for Higgins. She'd never previously given them the time of day—I'm not even sure whether she'd ever set foot on the red carpet—but she went around reading the names on the doors and introducing herself. She introduced herself to Senator Leyonhjelm and those that didn't make it into the 45th Parliament in 2015: Senator Muir, Senator Madigan, Senator Wang and Senator Lazarus. She went around trying to convince them that they should make it easier for banks to get their hands on our retirement savings and that, of all the issues facing the financial services sector, this somehow was a priority.

The priority was not the issues at the time with the corporate regulator being asleep at the wheel. It was not the problems with whistleblowers coming to politicians because of the regulator's silence. It was not the crisis in the life insurance sector—a huge crisis that is still ongoing to this day. It was not the enormous rate-rigging scandal that was going on. And it was not even, at the time, the issue of credit card interest rates. The first priority of this government back then was complaining about what was happening around superannuation.

The disconnect between that and what senators themselves were facing at the time was stark. Senators' offices back then were hearing, and to this day still keep hearing, about dodgy financial advisers, about bank rip-offs, about insurance scams. And the minister was marching around the Senate declaring that attacking industry superannuation funds should really be the priority and that the banks should be able to get their hands on worker retirement savings.

These were the same crossbenchers who, time and time again over the previous year, had stood up to the banks, stood up to the big end of town, and absolutely made the right call to protect consumers from predatory behaviour, acting in the best interests of bank consumers and in the best interests of their savings. The crossbench of the 44th Parliament can hold their heads high about the way they acted, behaved, and respected an industry that was working, an industry that was effective. I think it's important that we recognise the success of those crossbenchers, many of whom are no longer here with us, in being able to prevent bad legislation like this on financial services matters from actually passing.

When the coalition were elected in 2013, they published a policy document called Our Plan. I'm sure those in the chamber will remember it. It had a mugshot on the front cover of then Minister Turnbull, Andrew Robb, then Minister Hockey, then Prime Minister Abbott, Julie Bishop and Warren Truss. It was a vague 20 pages. There was nothing in that at all about the Future of Financial Advice reforms. And yet, a few days before Christmas 2013, former financial services minister Senator Sinodinos issued a press release announcing that the government would be consulting on reforms. By March, Senator Sinodinos had created a new coalition: the consumer group Choice, the Council on the Ageing and National Seniors had all come out against it.

Once his portfolio had been handed to Senator Cormann, he announced a pause. And then, in the end, Senator Cormann waited for a new crop of senators. On 1 July 2014, the senators elected in the previous September arrived in parliament. I'm sure we all remember; it feels like so long ago now. There was the Palmer United Party, the Motoring Enthusiast Party, Family First and our remaining friend from that period, Senator Leyonhjelm.

But before we were even able to actually start looking at this legislation, Minister Cormann insisted that the most pressing issue was winding back FOFA so banks and financial advisers again could take more money in fees and commissions. Thankfully, by November 2014 the crossbench senators had gained some confidence, and with Senator Xenophon, who was also here at the time, we formed what we called the 'coalition of common sense'—an acronym that we later regretted!—and were able to defeat that piece of legislation.

Senators are here in this place to do everything we can to make sure people who earn money are able to see it when they retire. There's something quite fantastic about the idea behind superannuation and the Australian superannuation model. It's an idea that says there will be a savings pool for the nation, that it will take pressure off the welfare system when it comes to retirement savings and that this is all going to occur by having a system in which workers, during their earnings period, are able to put money aside for a later period.

And it's been incredibly successful. It's the envy of the world—the type, model and bipartisanship that's been experienced on superannuation for so long at a practical level. Even the Howard government, which in opposition, and certainly in government, had demonstrated ideologically a dislike for the superannuation model, and for the industry superannuation model in particular, weren't as brazen as this government has been in trying to destroy a sector that has been so effective and successful, and that has been able to provide the savings that the nation has needed.

In October last year Minister O'Dwyer invited the industry funds to a press conference held here in parliament to talk about how people's retirement savings could be used to invest in Australian jobs. Instead, at that conference she told the industry super funds that they should be more like the banks. And this was ridiculed; it was laughed at. Industry super funds consistently outperform banks. They deliver returns to their members instead of profits to bankers. APRA publishes tables year in, year out and nothing changes. Industry funds have the same investing mindset as the old mutual funds. They're not-for-profits delivering steady, patient returns over very long time frames. Industry funds consistently outperform bank owned super funds. Yet, again, the ideology that keeps creeping into this debate is that you end up getting the banks, and those that support them, simply trying to legislate to give the banks an artificial advantage when it comes to competing.

In November 2014, the crossbench worked together to defeat one long line of the Abbott government's disasters, which was the FOFA laws we spoke about. What we're seeing now is another attempt, a later attempt, for us to deal with an unnecessary attack on industry superannuation. This year, 2017, marks 25 years since the introduction of compulsory superannuation in Australia. In 25 years the industry has grown to $2.3 trillion, and it's projected to grow to $4 trillion shortly. Industry super funds are a large part of the success of the growth of the Australian super industry fund. The question we have to ask is: what is the rush with this legislation? What is even the need for this legislation? It's diagnosing an illness that currently does not exist.

Take the independence and the power they want to give to APRA to decide who is independent. Australian capital markets and the business community enjoy high esteem. There is no shortcoming in the existing definition. The government has a preoccupation with the word 'independent', when it is really skill that serves the director. As former ACCC head Professor Graeme Samuel says, a director needs to be 'cognitively independent, with a dispassionate view, an objective view'. Former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser told the committee that skills and values are more important than independence.

And yet here we are again debating another piece of legislation that is a veiled swipe at an industry that does not need to have this. All of this comes back to a blatant refusal of what is really needed in this sector, and that is a full-blown royal commission into Australian banking. If we're going to start diagnosing the problems that exist in our financial services sector then we have to start looking at the big issues like the vertically integrated model, like the dodgy advice that has ripped people off time after time. I would urge the Senate to have a look at the work of the Senate Economics Committee, a committee that I chaired for a period and now is being chaired by Senator Ketter.