Wayne Swan confirms Cbus has partnership agreements with the CFMEU and other unions

Cbus chair Wayne Swan says it has ‘highly commercial’ partnerships with unions but couldn’t say how much they’re worth, when asked about the under-fire super fund paying over $1m to the CFMEU.

Cbus chair Wayne Swan during the Cbus Annual Members Meeting in November, 2024.

Cbus chair and national Labor president Wayne Swan says the under-fire super fund has “partnership agreements” with the embattled CFMEU, as he backed in three new directors with links to the militant union.

Under questioning from Liberal senator Andrew Bragg during the Economics References Committee public hearing at Parliament House in Canberra, Mr Swan was asked how much Cbus pays to unions.

“I don’t have the figure, the total figure, but they are partnership agreements which are subject to the (best financial interests duty) test because they are highly commercial arrangements which deliver great benefit to the fund, in the same way that we have partnership arrangements with the Master Builders, with the CFMEU, with the AWU and other organisations,” Mr Swan said.

“Partnership agreements exist across the industry between sponsoring organisations and the fund,” he added.

According to the latest Cbus ­financial report, the $94bn fund paid the CFMEU more than $1.8m in the year to June 30 – made up of directors’ fee payments, industry partnership payments and rental payments. In the year to June 30, 2023, Cbus paid it about the same under the same categories.

Bill Shorten, Anthony Albanese, Paddy Crumlin and Kim Carr in 2019. Picture: AAP

It also paid the Master Builders Association $599,000 in the 2024 financial year, and $573,145 the year before that.

In response to a question from Senator Bragg about whether Cbus would continue to pay the union given it has been placed into administration, Mr Swan said: “All our partnership agreements at the moment with the CFMEU are suspended, subject to the independent inquiries that are going on.”

Mr Swan also defended three new controversial appointments to the Cbus board, including union heavyweight Paddy Crumlin.

He told the committee the ­prudential regulator received a Deloitte report confirming Cbus’s new CFMEU-linked directors were fit and proper.

“Mr Crumlin does have extensive experience in running super funds and to characterise the experiences of the maritime fund as reflecting on his competence is not a fair thing to do,” he said.

“And if you look at the evaluations that we looked at, and I assume the evaluations that Deloitte went through, they’ve concluded that as well.”

CFMEU-linked Jason O’Mara and Lucy Weber also joined the Cbus board as directors, despite the union being placed into administration and in the wake of ­alleged criminal links.

Mr Swan said the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority received a report from Deloitte to confirm Mr Crumlin, Mr O’Mara and Ms Weber passed a fit and proper test. He said the fund did “our fit and proper” process for the directors, amid a looming 90-day deadline to announce them.

Wayne Swan appears before the Senate committee via video. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

“Deloitte conducted a fit and proper process and we conducted our own fit and proper processes, and the directors that we appointed were appointed in line with those processes,” he said, adding the regulator had not expressed “unhappiness” about the appointment directly with him, after APRA chair John Lonsdale last week told the committee it had not received the Deloitte report.

“I am in continual conversation with APRA,” he said.

Mr Swan said he had been in Melbourne this week for a series of “critical” meetings with the Cbus board, and that he was “happy” to be before the Senate despite earlier declining to appear.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission has alleged Cbus allegedly mishandled more than $20m worth of death and disability payouts, in some cases taking more than a year to pay out the claims to grieving and vulnerable families.

Mr Swan said he was shocked to learn about the delays. “I was sick in the guts when I heard that we had this accumulated list of people whose claims had been delayed. Our fund has put enormous energy into rectifying this as far as we possibly can,” he said.

Mr Swan also insisted that he is an independent director, in line with former competition regulator Graeme Samuel’s recommendations spanning a decade that the fund should recruit more independent board members.