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ACTU’s PRIMARY POSITION IN RESPECT OF THE INQUIRY
The ACTU has maintained a position during this Inquiry in which it has questioned the motivation for the Inquiry, the appropriateness of the core assumptions behind the Inquiry and the approach taken by the Commission. We maintain our concerns in regards to these areas and reiterate these concerns below.
The fundamental basis for the Inquiry appears to be an assertion by the Government (and not challenged by the Commission) that the current default arrangements are at various times not comprehensive, as well as being ineffective or inefficient. The assertion is then made that the process to remedy these supposed failings is to seek to find a competitive (and by the Commission’s assumptions, therefore, efficient) system for determining default funds.
The ACTU believes this is completely refuted by the facts when any sort of objective review of superannuation arrangements in Australia, or of best practice in almost all advanced economies, is considered. Further it is our view that the path being followed is detrimental to the interests of Australian workers in their processes of trying to aggregate a decent accumulation benefit in their superannuation schemes to provide for their retirement needs. It is also, in our view, potentially destructive in terms of public policy settings for the future.
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