“Keep your hands off our super”

 

The Royal Commission has revealed in the banks and insurance companies a chronic failure of prudent governance by their own company boards. These are boards, upon which sit directors, highly paid, highly experienced in business, industry or finance, highly educated, all with varying levels of membership of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, yet somehow just missing all of this crooked, shonky and on thousands of occasions, potentially criminal behaviour. 

All Peter Dutton worried about with the Royal Commission was the opportunity to have the investigation get into industry boards with their “union members and whatnot on the board”, but it’s the boards without “union members and whatnot on the boards” which are the problem here.

Under the front page headline “White flag on union super”, the Financial Review revealed today that the federal government “has dumped long-standing plans to dilute union and employer group influence on industry super fund boards after the damage done to retail funds by the Payne Royal Commission ended any prospect securing Senate support.” Apparently this was a decision taken by former PM Turnbull and where this week’s PM has said that view won’t change.

Back in December 2013, Robbo’s Pearls shouted “keep your hands off our super”, arguing strongly against the Government strategy, up until now trapped in the Senate due to a lack of support, to put purported “independents” on industry boards. Here is a link, because the decision just announced by the Government to back off on the commitment to get their mates a gig on superannuation boards is the end of the battle.  Maybe what company boards need is more union members and whatnot and maybe Robbo’s pearls has helped encourage this debate.

It certainly creates a new landscape for the prudent regulation of superannuation funds.