Australian Election: Superannuation is a Labor Rort. By Peta Credlin.
Since 1992, despite compulsory super, the percentage of retirees on the full pension has merely inched down from 63 per cent to 60 per cent …
Compulsory superannuation has failed to switch retirees from government payments to their own savings
The main impact of compulsory super has been less the creation of more self-funded retirees and more the creation of a vast superannuation industry based on fees averaging about $30bn a year [$1,200 per man, woman, and child, per year]. …
Because about two-thirds of compulsory superannuation is held by industry super funds, where 50 per cent of directors typically are retired union officials or ex-Labor MPs, the impact of compulsory super has been less the enrichment of retirees and more the socialisation of capitalism.
The public companies where most of it is invested — under the institutional weight of the voting bloc these woke union funds deliver — have steadily adopted environmental, social and governance practices that have their origin more in politics than in business.
That has led to pressure on corporations to divest coal assets and to campaign for same-sex marriage, Indigenous constitutional recognition and now even a transgender push that negates biological sex, especially for women.
Canny political operator that Keating was, I’m sure his main objective was always finding a way to replace the diminishing clout of the unionised workforce inside business (and the union dues workers paid) with taking over the boardrooms of these companies to transform big business, neutralising their links to the Liberal side of politics and pushing them to adopt Labor’s so-called progressive agenda. The fact there was a benefit for retirees was just the marketing hook to make palatable the transfer of workers’ wages from their own pockets to union-dominated funds.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of industry super fund shareholdings has seen the near complete cessation of public company political donations to the Coalition parties that once were largely funded by them. On the other hand, regular union donations via affiliation fees have kept the Labor Party very well funded – despite the collapse in union membership from more than 50 per cent to under 10 per cent of the private sector workforce since the 1980s – so Labor now routinely outspends the Coalition in election campaigns. …
Morrison’s housing scheme threatens Labor’s money:
Scott Morrison’s 11th-hour election bid to give first-home buyers access to up to $50,000 of their existing super savings towards a deposit has injected a rare note of philosophical difference into a campaign previously characterised by both sides’ attempt to scratch electoral itches by throwing government money at them. …
And Labor knows, if that is successful, it threatens all the long-term political pay-offs that Big Super has secured for the cultural left. Hence the instant vitriol rather than the me-too reaction that has greeted nearly every other Coalition initiative.
As a scarcely less savvy political operator than Keating, Morrison must have noticed that three million Australians had accessed their super, when they temporarily could, to meet hardships at the start of the pandemic.
That’s a vast constituency that preferred benefits now to benefits in several decades, and preferred to spend their super on their own needs rather than those ordained by government.
Whose money is it? Once it’s in the super funds, it’s effectively Labor’s money, influencing companies to move left and earning fees for Labor.
