Senate votes to review default super process
The Senate has asked the Productivity Commission to create a new process for the selection and review of default superannuation funds under modern awards.
The Shadow Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Mathias Cormann (pictured), said yesterday’s action by the Senate was in support of a Coalition motion. Labor voted against the motion.
Cormann described the current process as anti-competitive, as well as being “not objective, not evidence-based and not transparent”.
“We have now had two years of a closed shop, anti-competitive arrangement to select default superannuation funds, with a significant bias towards union superannuation funds,” Cormann said.
“This may be may be in the best interests of the union movement, but it is not in the public interest.”
Cormann said Australians “deserve the benefit that would flow from robust competition between all superannuation funds”.
The report from the Productivity Commission is expected to be tabled in the Senate by 31 May, 2011.
Cormann said Labor’s decision to vote against the motion represented a turn-around on pre-election support from Labor to seek to amend the current agreement through the Productivity Commission.
Cormann also accused Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Bill Shorten of harbouring a union bias, which restricted him from acting in the public interest on the matter.
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