I recently gave a speech in the chamber on why Superannuation is a scam.
People were never given a say by Paul Keating as to whether or not they wanted to give up their wages nor are they allowed to vote for board members.
This is just wrong. People should be allowed to decide how their wages are used and secondly if they are forced to hand over their wages, then they should be allowed to vote for the board that manages their money.
Both major parties have supported superannuation over the last three decades as they always back the establishment over the individual.
PeopleFirstParty.au will make superannuation voluntary and make superannuation boards hold elections so members can have a say as to how their money is managed.
It’s time we put the People First.
Senate on 20/11/2024
MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Superannuation
Senator RENNICK (Queensland) (16:35): I rise today to support Senator Bragg’s motion. I’ll just pick up Senator Sheldon on those board appointments. The question I’ll ask Senator Sheldon is: were those board members elected by the members of that fund? They weren’t; they were selected.
In the People First Party, we are proposing a policy that all board members of superfunds have to be elected because democracy matters when it comes to capitalism. I know the Australian people weren’t given a choice in 1992 when Paul Keating decided to take two per cent of their wages and give it to someone they’d never met. Had he been honest with the Australian people back in 1992 and said, ‘By 2025, I’m going to take 12 per cent of your hard-earned wages and I’m going to give it to someone you’ve never met and you may or may not get it back when you’re 67,’ I strongly doubt the Australian people would have ever voted for such a scheme.
That is the problem with superannuation; it is undemocratic and it is effectively communism by stealth. Today we have almost $3 trillion in the superfund industry. I’m going to be honest here and I’m going to be critical of the Liberal Party as well. Howard and Costello should have killed superannuation stone-cold dead in 1996, when they first got into power. But they didn’t do that. They hopped on the gravy train and, as Senator Sheldon rightly points out, because the private superannuation funds were milking fees the Commonwealth Bank bought Colonial Mutual, National Australia Bank bought National Mutual, Westpac bought Bankers Trust and ANZ did a joint venture with ING. I well remember being shocked one year when Colonial Mutual’s return on equity was 66 per cent. Of course they could earn such a high return on equity because it wasn’t their equity they were playing with.
We well know the Productivity Commission came out in 2017 or 2018, I think, so it would be more by now, and said there is $30 billion a year spent on managing money in superannuation and that was because it was effectively one per cent of the $3 trillion under management. That’s expected to grow to $9 billion by 2050. But let’s get to the nub of what this motion is about: Cbus hasn’t been paying out people’s superannuation upon death.
I’ve had people come to me in my own office. They’ve had to struggle to get their pay outs. One lady, her fiance died at the age of 40 after getting the AZ vaccine. Her fiance suddenly dropped dead and she was unable to get any money. It’s only because she’s just gone public with it that she’s been able to get her fiance’s money out of superannuation. It has taken over a year for Cbus to pay that money out. That is an absolute disgrace. Apart from the fact that super needs to be voluntary in the first place, there need to be clear rules and guidelines as to how quickly money is paid out from superannuation upon the death of a person. They are playing games. They are basically abusing their inherent power to deny people who can’t afford legal costs their right to their loved one’s superannuation. It bells the cat on the whole fact that superannuation was never designed to help the people they’re taking the money from. It was never designed to help the workers.
We know today that there are still 50 per cent of retirees on a full pension. That is the same percentage of retirees that were on a full pension in 1992. There are $50 billion in tax concessions that go mainly to the upper 30 per cent, yet that pension only costs $53 billion. So who’s winning here? It’s certainly not hardworking Australians. To think that when their loved ones pass away they cannot access their money out of superannuation is an absolute disgrace.
What’s going to be an even a bigger disgrace now is that the other superannuation members of Cbus are going to have to pay the fines because their board members, who they never elected, were too incompetent to actually ensure a timely payout of death benefits upon death. That’s because they don’t really want to give your money back to you. They want to keep it for themselves so they can continue to milk fees and live off those rivers of gold at the expense of hardworking Australians.
