Opposition assistant treasury spokesman Mathias Cormann has called on Bill Shorten to immediately release the Productivity Commission (PC) report into default superannuation in modern awards.
As part of a statement released yesterday, Cormann included a signed a notice of motion that said he would move that the Senate order Shorten to produce a copy of the final the PC report no later than “non on 11 October 2012”.
“The Minister for Superannuation Bill Shorten must immediately release the Productivity Commission report into default super in modern awards which was handed to him last Friday,” Cormann said in a statement.
“All Australians, in particular those in default superannuation funds, deserve to know forthwith whether the Minister has been successful with his blatant recent attempt to bully the Productivity Commission into changing its previous recommendations in relation to default superannuation.
Cormann labelled the current process for selecting default funds under modern awards as a “national disgrace”.
“It is a closed shop, anti-competitive arrangement based on a non-transparent process through Fair Work Australia which inappropriately favours union dominated industry funds,” he said.
“It is this Labor government which is responsible for those current discredited arrangements for the selection of default super funds under modern awards through Fair Work Australia.”
Cormann claimed that since becoming Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Shorten has done “everything he can to help protect the unfair competitive advantage enjoyed by his friends in the union movement for as long as possible”.
“The Productivity Commission made some sensible recommendations in its interim report on how the current process could be made more transparent and more competitive,” Cormann said.
“In an extraordinary and unprecedented move Bill Shorten intervened in effectively ruling out any sensible move to a more open, transparent and competitive process for the selection of default funds.
“To ensure proper competition between default super funds is in the public interest and in particular in the interest of those Australians who end up in default superannuation arrangements.”
Meanwhile, Cormann said the coalition will also again move amendments to the MySuper legislation before the Parliament to ensure all MySuper products are able to compete freely in the default fund market without the need for an additional non-transparent and anti-competitive process through Fair Work Australia.
Calls to Shorten’s office were not returned by InvestorDaily‘s deadline.
