Default funds excluded from Workplace Relations review

The Productivity Commission appears to have stymied the hopes of some financial services lobby groups to have default funds under modern awards included into its inquiry into Workplace Relations Framework.

While the Financial Services Council (FSC) and some individual financial services companies have strongly lobbied for changes to the default funds under modern awards regime and what they see as the undue influence of unions, their arguments will go unheard during the inquiry.'

The Productivity Commission's issues paper detailing what it expects to cover, specifically rules out discussion of the Superannuation Guarantee.

"While it may have arisen as an industrial relations trade-off, the Guarantee is now recognised as one of a set of interlocking retirement income policy measures, and consideration of it in any detail would therefore cover many issues not central to this inquiry," it said.

Notwithstanding the Productivity Commission's attitude to superannuation, the Assistant Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has signalled that the Government is concerned about opening the default funds sector to more competition.