Minister for Superannuation Chris Bowen has outlined two key Cooper review recommendations the goverment wants to fast-track.
The government intends to fast-track certainty on two of the key Cooper review recommendations, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law Chris Bowen has said.
Bowen said the MySuper and SuperStream recommendations make good common sense and the government is seeking to provide certainty of direction on the two measures in the not too distant future, preferably before the election.
SuperStream was an essential measure for dragging superannuation into the 21st century, he told yesterday's Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) lunch in Melbourne.
"The industry needs to take better advantage of the technology and to improve what ASFA calls the 'plumbing'. At the moment, it is too complex to navigate easily and simply," Bowen said.
Cooper review chair Jeremy Cooper, who also attended the luncheon, addressed criticism that MySuper was a paternalistic measure.
Cooper said the compulsory super system could in itself be regarded as paternalistic, though given the system was outsourced to the private sector, the government had a responsibility to ensure it was working efficiently and to the benefit of all Australians - including those who had little interest in super.
By putting efficiency and outcomes in a trustee's crosshairs, MySuper would drive improvements throughout the whole industry, he said.
"What it will create is a benchmark that is quite transparent, and in order to be attractive other products will have to provide something better than that benchmark."
Cooper also signposted the need for governance of superannuation to be consolidated into "one place", distributed as it currently is across a number of different jurisdictions including the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Corporations Act, the Superannuation Industry Supervision Act and the Australian Taxation Office.
In response, Bowen said while longevity and the provision of retirement income products were important issues, it was not the place of the government to take on that role.
He also confirmed there would be no change to the preservation age in the near future.
The two non-consecutive alphabetic letters encountered most often last week caused more controversy than the underlying policy they represented, Wouter Klijn writes.... read more »
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