Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

nator BRAGG () (): It's regrettable but necessary to make some comments on this matter of urgency. Effectively, this is about the compulsory superannuation scheme, which is compulsory and sees about $30 billion a year going out in fees—quite a lot of fees. On a comparative basis, it would be one of the least efficient and least productive retirement schemes anywhere in the world.

Effectively, what you have here is a very reasonable transparency measure. At least $15 million in this year is being spent by superannuation funds to go into union coffers, and that is not being disclosed to members. Now, that figure will balloon to $30 million by the end of the decade, so that is $30 million of retirement savings that is being shovelled into unions that members can't see.

The nub of this issue—and there have been lots of contributions on this issue—is that, in regard to the funds' expenditure, as a result of these changes in regulations, there is now more transparency by visiting the AEC website, where the unions are captured and have to disclose their sources of income, than there is available to the members of the superannuation funds. If I'm a member of a super fund and I go to the super fund website, I get less information than I would as a punter going to the AEC website and searching on associated entities and finding the income the unions get from the super funds. That's how ridiculous this is.

Effectively, the Labor Party was against these reforms. The now minister, Stephen Jones, wrote 90 letters to members of the then government, urging us not to proceed with our own reforms and pass the Your Future, Your Super changes. That's because the vested interests that Mr Jones and the Labor Party are closest to don't want to see these changes because they don't want to see transparency. They don't want people to see the amount of money that is being distributed from the super funds to the unions.

There is no question that there has been too much politics in super, but I think it's hard to avoid when you have a system that has been created by the laws of this country and you have allowed such a poorly run structure, where there is huge leakage, to operate for 30 years. There is no question that the banks have done a bad job with super. They have charged ridiculously high fees and they have plundered the retirement savings of their members, and the unions have been able to do the same. And they are proceeding with this agenda of taking tens of millions of dollars a year out of the funds and putting it into the unions.

Now, one of the funds, which is called First Super—it is a very small fund—is taking $3½ million a year in directors' fees on a tiny little super fund. This is more than an ASX 20 company would be doing. Of course, some of the first disclosures we've seen under this new regime, including from AustralianSuper, are that they are now able to conceal more than $100 million in related party transactions and a further $1 million in payments to unions. So we're now not allowed to see any of these payments. These are now secret—brought to you by the party that apparently is arguing in favour of transparency. I think it is very regrettable.

If the Labor Party were obsessed with the legacies of Paul Keating and all these people from the 1980s and were genuinely concerned about the longevity and the credibility of the superannuation scheme, surely they would be embracing the idea of transparency, because the people who are forced to put their money into this scheme are forced to put their money into this scheme; they have no choice. So the least you could do is show them where their money is going. And if you have concerns about the money going to related parties in other part of the industry, then make that transparent as well.

I think the issues that the Greens have raised may well be legitimate issues. Maybe there is scope for more transparency, but the bottom line here in this debate is that the regulations that were made by the last government that require transparency on payments from super funds to unions or any other related party are credible and should not be removed and that the disallowance that has been proposed by Senator Pocock should be supported by anyone who wants to campaign in the future on transparency and integrity. Certainly, they won't be able to make these arguments if they are not going to support this motion.