Time to end the politics in superannuation

It is time to leave superannuation's industrial past behind and focus on the best interests of members.

The Federal Opposition last month took serious exception to the fact that the Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten, appeared to pre-empt the findings of the Productivity Commission's review of default funds under modern awards.

In the eyes of the Opposition spokesman on Financial Services, Senator Mathias Cormann, the minister did this by effectively adopting a submission compiled by two of his departments – Treasury and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations – as Government policy.

It did not escape the attention of Cormann that the submission in question also substantially backed the arguments which had been made by the Industry Super Network (ISN) and the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) arguing for a continuing role for Fair Work Australia in the selection of default funds.

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Cormann made much of the fact that the minister had once again appeared to be looking after the Australian Labor Party’s core trade union constituency and vowed that a future Coalition Government would redress the situation by judging the Productivity Commission’s recommendations on their merits and acting accordingly.

It is in this context, therefore, that the trustee boards and executives running industry super funds might find the time to consider how, precisely, life might change for them in the event that a Coalition Government is elected in 2013.

Indeed, the industry super funds might care to reflect that perpetuating strong links between superannuation and industrial relations might not be in their best interests or the interests of their fund members under a Coalition Government led by Tony Abbott.

With controversy still bubbling around issues such as the administration of the Health Services Union (HSU) and allegations actually touching on the role of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, when she was an industrial lawyer advising the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, there are those who suggest one of the earliest actions of a Coalition Government might be a commission of inquiry into the trade union movement.

Such an inquiry would, of course, be an act of political expediency on the part of a Coalition Government, but it would likely be capable of being justified to the electorate on the basis of the questions still lingering over the HSU and other ongoing matters.

It would then be only a small matter for the Government to devise terms of reference for such an inquiry which encompassed union involvement in superannuation funds – something that would then open the way for questioning based on often-expressed concerns around multiple directorships and conflicts of interest.

The problem for the industry superannuation funds in countering such moves is that a Coalition Government could point to the lobbying efforts and outcomes achieved by the ISN to suggest that politicisation of superannuation had already occurred.

Superannuation should, of course, always be open to policy-related debates. It should not, however, become a battleground for partisan politics.

It is a measure of the degree to which superannuation has become politicised that a number of Coalition politicians choose to describe industry superannuation funds as “union” superannuation funds.

This is despite the fact that the trustee boards of industry funds hold equal representation between employers and employees.

What the Coalition politicians argue is that while those trustee boards do, indeed, provide equal representation, they nonetheless deliver undue influence to both former and serving trade union officials, and that some significant names are noted across multiple boards.

Superannuation is far too important to broader Australian prosperity to become the subject of ugly partisan politics. The best interests of fund members will be served by ensuring it is de-industralised and depoliticised.

The superannuation guarantee was born out of award superannuation, but it is time for the industry to move forward and leave its industrial relations past behind.