Wayne Swan is ‘happy to be here’ at the Senate grilling he tried to avoid

Wayne Swan may no longer be treasurer, but he is still a busy man. A happy one too.

That was the point Labor’s national president and the chairman of troubled superannuation firm Cbus wanted to establish off the bat when he fronted up to the Senate economics references committee via videolink on Friday morning.

“I’m happy to be here, Senator, and I’m happy to answer questions,” Swan told the committee chair, Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, when asked if he wanted to make an opening statement.

Cbus chair Wayne Swan appears via video conference during a hearing with the economic references committee.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Swan had been in Melbourne all week with a “crowded agenda” of Cbus board meetings and its annual members’ meeting. But, he stressed again, he was happy to squeeze in an appearance before the committee to address its queries.

Swan’s demeanour told a story. Rather than ebullience, he radiated ennui. He looked about as thrilled to be there as did Johnny Depp and Amber Herd while praising Australia’s biosecurity laws in their infamous 2016 “hostage video” delivered after they were caught smuggling their dogs Pistol and Boo into Australia.

The backstory to Swan’s opening statement was that he tried to avoid appearing before the committee this week. In a letter sent to Bragg at the weekend, Swan said he would skip the hearing because Cbus’ chief executive had already appeared before the inquiry, which is probing how to improve Australia’s retirement system.

Bragg, as this masthead reported earlier this week, replied that fobbing off the hearing could have serious consequences, ranging from being found in contempt of the Senate to a fine or even imprisonment. No one has yet been sent to the clink for defying an order to appear before a Senate committee, but there’s a first time for everything, right? Whatever the reason, a hole opened up in Swan’s jam-packed diary, and he granted the committee an hour of his time.

Who could blame him, deep down, for not wanting to be there? Only a masochist would find pleasure in entering such a hostile environment.

Bragg, after all, is waging a crusade against the industry super sector, which he views with superhuman loathing because of its codependent relationship with the trade union movement.

And Cbus is distinctly on the nose after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission took the company to court alleging it had delayed $20 million worth of payments owed to members.

As the hearing progressed, passive aggression blanketed the proceedings like a layer of smog.

The main message Swan was there to deliver was contrition, not umbrage. He had been “sick in the guts”, he said, to discover that members’ death and disability payments had been delayed for so long.

“I want to apologise to all those who’ve been affected in our fund and that we, as a board, when we first became aware of the magnitude of this problem set out to rectify this problem, and something like 80 per cent of the unresolved cases have now been dealt with,” Swan said.

As the clocked ticked over an hour, Labor senators moved to quickly wrap up the hearing – even though Liberal National Party senator Matt Canavan had more questions to ask. Swan, too, said he had other places to be. He had time for one more quick question from Canavan before he would have to log off.

Whether happy to be there or not, he was certainly happy to have it over with.

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