At stake is the future of $2.3 trillion in our retirement savings held in superannuation funds, massive money managers who are now at war with each other and with the Turnbull government about where some of that cash is going as allegations of special favours and interests play out.

The “fox in the henhouse” campaign was one part of a campaign by the industry super funds, non-profit outfits controlled jointly by unions and employers, which showed banks out to swindle hard working Australians of their pensions to line their profit statements.

And that provoked a blue, with the ad sent to the Advertising Standards Board as punters, no doubt egged on by the banks, objected to its “fear mongering”.

Those tensions come as Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer is due to introduce sweeping reforms into Parliament in a fortnight, and as the government accuses industry funds of using their members’ money to bankroll unions and ultimately, Labor.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions three days ago fired another warning shot at the banks, releasing a “dossier” of banking scandals to MPs – trying to convince them to vote against those changes by showing households had been ripped off by more than $480 million in two years.

The tensions are so high that one senior source confided that an ACTU official had even spat at a member of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority in a heated consultation on the legislation at the banking regulators Melbourne offices in 2015.

But Employment Minister Michaelia Cash tells Saturday Extra that millions of people “would be shocked to know that over the past decade, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from their super funds to political organisations”.

“Australians have a right to know whether their life savings and other funds put aside for their benefit are being bankroll the Labor Party, which is why the government is strengthening transparency and accountability of these funds,” she says.

An analysis of payments between industry super funds and unions does indeed show more than $53 million has moved from pension funds to unions through director fees and other payments in the last decade, with the CFMEU and United Voice the biggest beneficiaries.

Over the same period, around $65 million has been donated from those unions to Labor despite just one per cent of industry super members being Labor members.

That doesn’t quite paint the full picture, however, with industry funds required to also have employer representatives on their boards, including from the Australian Hospitality Association and Australian Industry Group.

Some in the government think that outdated laws which haven’t been updated for decades mean those employer groups might be in benefitting fro lucrative fees, kickbacks, sponsorships, wage subsidies and other payments.

So, as industry super and banks slug it out, new superannuation reforms are being rolled out which would force all funds, including the ones owned by banks, to have minimum number of independent directors and an independent chair.

The government argues that’s fair enough, and that Labor’s own 2010 review recommended the same thing.

On the other hand, Industry Super Australia’s Matt Linden rightly points out that under the current arrangements, industry funds have outperformed bank-owned operations and avoided serious scandals.

The most recent analysis by ChantWest shows industry super funds vastly outperformed retail funds, returning 10.3 per cent over a decade compared to 9.2 per cent.

Over the last year, industry funds have had an average 9.6 per cent return, compared to 8.2 per cent from retail funds.

The government also wants to force superannuation providers to have annual meetings, as companies do, and to hand over more information to members about how the funds set their fees and how they spend the money on operating expenses.

But the most contentious change for industry super funds is a proposal that would let about one million people who are on enterprise bargaining agreements leave their default fund, which they can’t now, and decide to put their money elsewhere.

That may seem fair enough. But Linden says that people who “exercise choice” more often than not end up in more expensive and worse performing funds.

“Until sales practices are conflict free and member interests are put first, further deregulation remains a long way off,” he says.

And he backs that up with Essential conducted research commissioned by ISA which shows consumers overwhelmingly trust industry super funds over banks – 69 per cent compared to 31 per cent.

More than half the people surveyed, 58 per cent, agreed that banks would exploit more access to superannuation for their own gain – and hurt their retirement incomes.

But as O’Dwyer – hardly a conservative ideologue crusading against unions – says, nobody is forcing consumers to do anything. The government simply wants the industry to be more transparent and accountable with how it uses members’ money.

“It is always important to remind ourselves whose money this is. It is not the government’s, not the banks, not the shareholders, not the executives, not the directors, and not the trade unions,” she says.

“That is why we must ensure the system is held to the highest standards of transparency and accountability … the government is only concerned with protecting members’ money and members’ interests.”