The federal government was not acting in the public’s best interest by capitulating to union demands for industry super funds to remain as the default options, opposition assistant treasury spokesman Mathias Cormann said yesterday.
“The Labor government has sought to impose one particular business model,” Cormann said.
“This should not be to the exclusion of other models. People should be able to make decisions on competitive transparency.”
A coalition government would have a “diverse industry” where Australians could choose “between different business models”, he said.
He said having retail funds excluded from being the default fund for awards was “not appropriate” and it “should be competitively neutral, efficient and the most transparent [process] possible”.
Fair Work Australia’s current methods for choosing default funds were “secretive and anti-competitive” and favoured union funds, he said.
“This is a national disgrace. Even the Labor Party in the lead-up to the last election in August 2010 promised this would be more open. This hasn’t happened,” he said.
Very belatedly, Financial Services and Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten had undertaken for the Productivity Commission to ensure the process was “open, competitive and transparent”, he said.
But, he said, “surely if a product complies with MySuper, then surely they should be able to compete”, he said.
“Let any MySuper product compete in the default fund market,” he said.
