Tim Wilson grilled the prudential regulator over its response to Industry Super Australia’s (ISA) latest media campaign, which he said was an attempt to “bully and intimidate” members of the Morrison government.
“When you have entities that are established for the purpose of return to members of their own money, and potentially up to $10 million is being spent to try and intimidate politicians into doing their job as elected by the people of Australia, with a clear bullying and intimidatory tone, how is that justified?” Mr Wilson said.
APRA chair Wayne Byres said that there was no “black and white rule” on advertising and that the regulator was now looking at the campaign after becoming aware of it last week, but that it would have difficulty intervening against Industry Super Australia (ISA).
“Clearly it’s a campaign by an industry association – the members of that industry association obviously contribute to that – but we don’t directly control an industry association. So we have to look at the circumstances by which funds decide and make judgements about their participation and the value they extract from being part of an industry association,” Mr Byres said.
APRA deputy chair Helen Rowell added that the regulator “had not yet formed a view” on whether there had been breaches, despite Mr Wilson noting that ISA had dramatically increased its advertising as the Morrison government weighs a potential cut or freeze to the SG increase.
Ms Rowell said that APRA was assessing the analysis undertaken by industry funds to understand the efficacy of advertising and how it benefited members over time.
“It’s fair to say that if we are going to find anything in our work it is going to be that that analysis and evidence probably isn’t as robust as it needs to be,” Ms Rowell said.
“That would be an understatement,” Mr Wilson replied.
“We ask questions of super funds through this committee and most of them admitted that they’ve done no performance evaluation of their advertising campaigns.”
