Gambling with our future
How Super is Super?
By Anna Pha
Socialist Party of Australia
Reviewed by Barry Healy
Since the mid-'80s, Australian workers have been herded into superannuation schemes through a government and ACTU-agreed plan to reduce the number of people who will be entitled to the age pension. The ALP government has delighted big business by diverting large amounts of workers' savings into their hands and cutting social security spending — but has this benefited workers?
Ana Pha's well-researched pamphlet raises timely questions and points out the dangers. Along the way she traces the history of superannuation in labour movement politics since the days of Chifley, the dealings of Hawke and the ACTU mandarins under cover of the Accord, the reasons employers find it so satisfying to gain control to workers' savings, the risks and the ethical issues.
What emerges is a frightening picture of relations between the major league financial managers, the ACTU and the ALP at the expense of workers. The financial corporations showed their gratitude to the ALP/ACTU by funding last year's ACTU congress and heavily advertising in ACTU publications. National Mutual even hosted a special cocktail party for the delegates.
Many workers do not realise how far their future security has been tied to the fluctuations in the property markets and to what extent government regulations have been organised with the intention of depriving them of pension rights.
More than $160 billion in super funds is controlled by the private sector. There is no unified set of regulations or a regulatory agency with real teeth to watch over these funds. "There is no satisfactory way to ensure that funds are secure in a privatised system", Pha says.
Workers forced to give over their money often discover that these savings become the private property of their employers. Robert Maxwell plundered his employees' pension fund of more than $1 billion.
Pha warns: "The likes of Bond, Skase, Connell, Elliot, Spalvins, etc and the reckless behaviour of the deregulated financial sector in the 1980s should serve as a warning. It is many of the same corporations and people who are making the running in the 'self-regulated' superannuation industry."
She details a number of ways in which the current loopholes in the industry can be closed up, but ultimately, she says, there is only one fair and equitable solution — a universal, government-run pension scheme, in which all contributions are pooled and used for the common good.
"Instead of tax concessions, tax rorts and tax deductions for employers and the rich, with workers taking the risks, the universal r more secure and equitable", she says.
There was a time when that was precisely the policy of the ALP and the declared aim of the ACTU.