APRA involvement in Shorten committee could be conflicted

The Federal Opposition has formally declared that it will not be proceeding with the Government’s Council of Superannuation Custodians amid suggestions that the Minister for Financial Services, Bill Shorten, has erred in involving the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) in the process. 

The Shadow Assistant Treasurer, Senator Mathias Cormann, today made clear that a Coalition Government would support neither Council of Superannuation Custodians nor the so-called “charter committee” established by the minister as a precursor to the establishment of the Council. 

Commenting on suggestions that it was inappropriate and a possible political conflict to have a senior APRA executive on the committee, Cormann said: “The job of regulators is to administer the law, not to get themselves involved in political processes, in particular in this pre-election period”. 

The Opposition spokesman said the Coalition would not be supporting the Council of Superannuation Custodians or the charter committee because the process was aimed at “stopping future governments from doing all the bad things to super the current government has done”. 

“Setting this Committee up is really a retrospective vote of no-confidence by Bill Shorten into the constant Rudd and Gillard government attacks on people’s retirement savings,” he said. “We don’t need another Committee, we need a change to a better government. 

“If we win the next election we won’t need either of those Committees, because we will not make any unexpected adverse changes to superannuation,” Cormann said.