Bill Shorten 'deeply conflicted', says Mathias Cormann
The Coalition would immediately replace the "closed-shop, anti-competitive" selection of default funds under modern awards with an "open, transparent and competitive process", according to Shadow Minister for Superannuation Mathias Cormann.
Speaking at the Self Managed Superannuation Fund Professionals' Association of Australia conference in Sydney yesterday, Cormann said the Government had "taken a couple of years to even just start the process of thinking about [the selection of default funds]".
The shadow minister was also highly critical of the Government's proposal to allow intra-fund advice to be bundled up in the member administration fee, which he said went against the stated aimed of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms.
"The Government wants to enshrine in legislation a system that would institutionalise people paying for advice they won't get through the intra-fund advice proposal. It is just completely ridiculous," he said.
Cormann said the current Financial Services Minister, Bill Shorten, was "deeply conflicted".
"Everything he does, in a legislative sense or a policy sense, comes from a vested interest perspective driven by the industry super funds movement that he is clearly very close to," Cormann said.
"Labor appears to be leveraging their time in government as much as they can to give a leg up to one segment of the financial services and superannuation market against everyone else," he added.
Cormann added that the Government was so "embarrassed" by the FOFA legislation that it had refused to have it assessed by its own Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR).
This followed comments by OBPR head Jason McNamara at the Senate Estimates Committee that the Government had breached its own best practice requirements, Cormann said.
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