Both the Financial Services Council (FSC) and the Federal Opposition have sent the Government a clear message that they will not accept any delay in referring the status of default superannuation funds under modern awards to the Productivity Commission.
The chief executive of the FSC, John Brogden, made clear in an address to his organisation’s national conference on the Gold Coast that delaying reference of the issue to the Productivity Commission until 2012 was unacceptable in the context of the “commoditisation” of default superannuation via the Government’s MySuper legislation.
He said the FSC was strongly of the view that there needed to be competition in the default fund market and that the current process was “totally unacceptable” and was “riddled with conflicts of interest”.
Brogden said referring the matter to the Productivity Commission in 2012 would be too late and said the FSC was formally calling on the Government to issue the terms of reference for a Productivity Commission inquiry now.
The Opposition spokesman on Financial Services, Senator Mathias Cormann, also told the FSC the Government needed to move to have the Productivity Commission deal with the issue immediately.
In doing so, Cormann said he believed the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten, was deliberately delaying the reference to provide an advantage to his political supporters in the industry superannuation fund movement.
