Industry super knows what’s best for you
The road to a captive market is paved with consumer protections.
Protecting the retirement savings of the nearly 18 million Australians with superannuation accounts is an objective no ordinary person would disagree with, except perhaps for political masterminds Angus Taylor and Andrew Bragg, who went to the 2025 election proposing to permit first home buyers to plunder their super for a deposit.
But just as the Coalition dreams up ways to pick the lock, Labor's industry fund comrades want to swallow the key. The implosion of the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds – which resulted in the savings of 12,000 people being fed to a woodchipper – galvanised the industry superannuation sector to converge on Canberra demanding their members' exits be welded shut. Their solution to the failure of two dodgy investment schemes is to see to it that every member becomes Bubble Boy.
Consumer protection is the alibi for this crusade. It materialised in Treasury's April consultation paper, entitled Enhancing Member Protections in the Superannuation System. Depending on which of the paper's more "adventurous" proposals survive, industry funds may find themselves beneficiaries of a new legislative moat – one that makes it inconvenient for members with an appetite for financial self-determination to jimmy open their sterile plastic isolator. Yes, there are germs in the outside world, but there may also be better funds.
The consultation's best worst ideas include a mandatory five-day waiting period before a member can change funds, during which the fund being exited will inevitably bombard the member with warnings about the risks of leaving – basically a mandated rendition of "Baby Come Back".
