O’Dwyer points to 5000 agreements precluding choice

There are around 5000 enterprise agreements which preclude employees making a choice about their superannuation fund, according to Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O'Dwyer.

As the Government continues to ramp up its campaign to alter the choice of fund arrangements, the minister has signalled that enterprise agreements which dictate where employees' default superannuation funds go will become a thing of the past, under changes being proposed by the Federal Government.

O'Dwyer has pin-pointed the scale of the issue stating that there are currently 20,000 enterprise bargaining agreements of which about 26 per cent "force" people into a particular superannuation.

The Assistant Treasurer's comments follow on from Government suggestions last year that it might regulate to change the manner in which enterprise agreements have dictated default superannuation outcomes.

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Speaking in a radio interview, O'Dwyer used the example of the 20,000 enterprise agreements to reinforce the Government's desire to inject choice back into the default funds equation.

Further, she denied that the measure was specifically aimed at industry funds, reinforcing that such a move would encompass all types of Australian Prudential Regulation Authority-regulated funds.

"Now given that the Government forces people to save money for their super, they should have the final say as to where that money goes and that's all that the Government's trying to do. It's nothing against any particular fund, in fact there are retail funds that are also part of enterprise bargaining agreements, it's not just industry funds," the Assistant Treasurer said.