The tangled web that links big unions and Labor to the $3.9 trillion super sector

When union boss Paddy Crumlin appeared at an international labour conference last month, he entered smiling to the strains of the 1997 hit Tubthumping: “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down.”

Crumlin, who led the merger of the Maritime Union he leads with the scandal-plagued CFMEU in 2018, had reason to grin.

Wayne Swan, Paddy Crumlin, Nicola Roxon and Julia Angrisano are among the many superannuation fund directors with labour connections.Credit: Monique Westerman

In 2021, the Maritime Super fund that Crumlin chaired had performed so poorly that it handed over investment decisions to another fund, Hostplus, and formally merged with it two years later. But this week Crumlin was back as a super fund director. The CFMEU had picked him as a director of Cbus, the building industry superannuation fund.

The CFMEU’s Crumlin pick is just one of a thicket of ties between the unions, Labor and industry superannuation funds that have come to be among the largest and most powerful players in the Australian economy.

These funds, which count about 11 million members, are run to profit their members while retail super funds are typically operated by for-profit businesses such as fund managers or banks.

And, under the industry model in which unions and employer groups nominate roughly equal numbers of directors to funds, ties between the sector and the labour movement are backed in.

But as the $3.9 trillion sector’s coffers have swelled, with big industry funds such as AustralianSuper ($341 billion under management), Cbus ($94 billion) and CareSuper ($53 billion) counting memberships up to 3.4 million people, the level of oversight that model delivers has come under greater scrutiny.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission launched Federal Court proceedings last week against Cbus after it failed to identify and prevent delays in processing death and disability insurance claims that affected 10,000 members, dating back to August 2022 – a failure that Cbus has conceded cost its members about $20 million.

CFMEU manufacturing division boss Michael O’Connor is facing separate allegations he misused his position at a small fund, First Super, to bankroll the salary of a union delegate with fund money while his organisation was experiencing financial difficulties.

And AustralianSuper, the industry’s largest, could be fined $27 million over its failure to consolidate more than 90,000 members’ accounts, costing them almost $70 million, in another case brought by the corporate regulator.

While the funds are variously declining to comment, blaming external contractors, or apologising and saying they have already addressed the issues, superannuation critics smell blood.

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, the opposition assistant spokesman for home ownership, says the sector’s board model, in which union and industry representatives oversee funds rather than typical corporate directors, is no longer fit for purpose. “There is an unmanageable conflict of interest between the interests of unions and workers,” Bragg says. “And there is the cavalcade of Labor politicians, how do they get these positions?”

Cbus, for example, is chaired by former Labor treasurer and current party president Wayne Swan. Don Russell, a former senior adviser to Labor prime minister Paul Keating, chairs AustralianSuper. HESTA, an $88 billion fund for the health and community sector, is chaired by Nicola Roxon, a Rudd-Gillard era minister.

Bragg says the sector has created a perception that it operates in line with modern governance standards. “It has taken the CFMEU issue to expose that,” he says.

Bragg is referring to the litany of allegations of underworld infiltration and corruption revealed in this masthead’s Building Bad series that led the federal government to appoint a barrister to take over the CFMEU. That barrister, Mark Irving, KC, said in August he wanted a “clean sweep” of serving CFMEU representatives from the Cbus board but reappointed one who resigned, Jason O’Mara, alongside Crumlin and a union lawyer, Lucy Weber. There are no allegations against any of those individuals.

Super Consumers Australia chief executive Xavier O’Halloran, whose group represents people with superannuation accounts, says the “partisan debate” over Cbus should not be the main focus.

“The skills and competence of these boards are really important, and that should be the primary focus,” O’Halloran says. “What we have seen in the UK, the regulator has a role in determining a fit and proper person, to determine who should be on the board.

“That’s not something the regulator [APRA] here does. They [unions and industry groups] make their own picks, and we think that could be improved, that there should be greater rigour.”

But while O’Halloran would like to see improvements to board regulation, and perhaps the introduction of more independent directors, he also confirms the industry superannuation sector is largely beating its retail competitors.

And there is evidence they are delivering on the goals Paul Keating had in mind when he set up the superannuation system: ensuring comfortable retirements and reducing the burden, over time, of the aged pension on federal government coffers.

The federal 2023 Intergenerational Report shows government spending on Aged and Service pensions will fall from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2 per cent by 2063, because of superannuation, even as the population ages.

Misha Schubert, chief executive of the lobby group for industry super funds, argues their performance shows the board model is working.

“The shared governance model of this type of fund – whether they arose from an industry, company or the public sector – was created with a clear and single purpose,” she wrote earlier this year. “To serve the fund members whose retirement savings they safeguard and grow.

“They do so by deeply understanding their members and the workplaces in which their members work – they know exactly whose money it is they are stewarding.”

The law governing superannuation funds, Schubert notes, requires directors to comply with high standards of performance and act in members’ best interests.

Alongside the labour representatives, big superannuation boards are balanced with employer heavyweights.

Cbus’ board employer directors, for example, are all nominated by Master Builders Australia and include that organisation’s chief executive, Denita Wawn. It’s a similar story with AustralianSuper, whose employer directors include AiG chief executive (and former Liberal staffer) Innes Willox, as well as a number of other directors aligned with the employer group that originally represented manufacturing firms.

A Cbus spokesman said in a statement that having equal employer and employee representation on its board had ensured its success for 40 years, and it was pleased to welcome the three new directors.

“After applying a comprehensive ‘fit and proper persons test’ the Cbus board confirmed the appointment of the three directors who share a determination to generate the strongest, sustainable financial returns for members and deliver the best possible service,” the spokesman said.

The fund previously apologised to its members over the claim delays, said it was implementing a compensation process and co-operated with ASIC. Swan, the Cbus chairman, told the Today show last week that many of the criticisms of the fund were “completely inaccurate” and blamed a contracted service provider for the insurance delays but apologised to affected members’ families.

“I can assure you, from the minute I became aware of this as chair of the board, I worked with the board to resolve it as quickly as possible,” he said.

AustralianSuper has apologised for the multiple accounts issue. “We found this mistake, we reported it, we apologised to impacted members, we paid them back, and we’ve improved our processes to prevent it happening again,” a spokesman said.

Michael O’Connor, the CFMEU manufacturing division boss, has voluntarily stood aside while the court case over the alleged misuse of his position is under way and had not responded to comment requests.

Unlike some of the union heavyweights, many of the Labor figures on superannuation boards have external pedigree. Russell, of AustralianSuper, for example, is a former ambassador to the United States who has worked at global finance firms including BNY Mellon Asset Management and Sanford C. Bernstein. HESTA chair Roxon is also an independent director at the property company Dexus.

And increasingly, the funds also have independent directors with financial or governance expertise. The 2.4 million-member Australian Retirement Trust, for example, has on its board former top regulator Helen Rowell, and Martin Parkinson, who headed the public service under conservative governments.

But that has not satisfied the sector’s critics. Bragg, the Liberal senator, is expected to haul Cbus chairman Swan before the Senate’s economics committee for questions next week. Given the pair’s background, it is unlikely to be a genteel affair.

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