The Charter’s planned role will include consulting on the future establishment of the recently announced Council of Superannuation Custodians.
Mr Shorten also released a discussion paper, Charter of Superannuation Adequacy and Sustainability and Council of Superannuation Custodians, which he said provides a framework for public consultation.
“The purpose of the Charter is to enshrine the core objectives, values and principles of our superannuation system for the long term,” Minister Shorten said in a statement.
Former MLC chief executive Steve Tucker, former AustralianSuper chair Elana Rubin, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority deputy chair Ross Jones, former Cooper Review chair Jeremy Cooper and former Federal Court judge Alan H Goldberg will join the group which will work with, but separately to, a recently announced Council of Superannuation Custodians.
Part of the Charter’s role will be to seek input on the establishment of the Council of Superannuation Custodians and act as “an impartial, expert superannuation body which protects the integrity of the scheme and ensures the policy settings are consistent with the core objects, values and principles,” Mr Shorten stated.
“This is about ensuring working Australians feel confident that the investment they’re making now is going to provide for a comfortable retirement.
“The Charter and Council will ensure that Australia’s superannuation system is protected and enhanced for future generations. I’d encourage all Australians with an interest in superannuation to have their say,” Minister Shorten said.
Within minutes of the announcement, the development of yet another consultative group was blasted by the opposition.
“Bill Shorten has today announced yet another committee to advise him on setting up another committee after that, to stop future governments from doing the bad things Labor has done to superannuation taxation over the past five years,” Shadow Minister for Superannuation Mathias Cormann said.
“Despite promising no change to superannuation in 2007, Labor over the past five years has increased taxes on people’s retirement savings 10 times already, increasing taxes on super by more than $8 billion in the process.”
Mr Cormann pointed to decreases in concessional, the contributions caps, cuts in super co-contribution benefits for low income earners, as well as Mr Shorten’s recently announced changes to super.
“We already have a Council of Custodians – they are the Australian people, who will pass judgement on this government at the next election,” he said.
In his speech announcing the new Charter Group, Mr Shorten called for a bipartisan approach to superannuation, saying forward-planning must be conducted outside the “gladiatorial arena of electoral politics” and ideology must play no part.
The establishment of the Charter and the Council have been designed with this in mind, he said.
“The Council itself would be an impartial, expert and apolitical body that is able to act as the stewards of the superannuation system, reporting to parliament on its sustainability and its prospects for attaining the vision the nation has for it,” he said.
“The proposal does not take decisions about superannuation away from parliament in the way the Reserve bank now does over interest rates. But the broad principle of protecting the collective wealth of the Australian people by putting it under the stewardship of a neutral Council that people can trust, is similar.”
The announcement was welcomed by the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, with chief executive Tom Garcia saying the Charter would help to ensure that decisions made about superannuation policy were made with the necessary facts and with long-term considerations.
“Given the importance of superannuation to workers and the Australian economy, we need to ensure that decisions on superannuation policy settings are evidence-based and, ideally, made with bipartisan political support,” Mr Garcia said.
“With the sheer size and project growth of superannuation, there will always be some changes, but these changes need to be made using a long-term lens and based on the fundamentals of sustainability and equity.”
Mr Garcia said the establishment of a Charter that would guide the Superannuation Council was a welcome step forward to an informed debate.
“The quality and diversity of appointees together with the framework within which this Council can work will be critical to ensuring successful superannuation policy settings,” he said.
However, several InvestorDaily readers have already objected to the make-up of the panel, contacting us to say they were highly critical of the lack of representation on the panel from the self-managed super fund sector.
