The non-profit industry funds want you to think there's nothing wrong. They are most often the funds new employees are defaulted into and they perform the best, on average far better than their for-profit competitors.
They wouldn't mind you thinking the Productivity Commission is in on a plot to let those for-profit competitors destroy them. On television their new advertising campaign shows a gloved hand unlatching the gate of a henhouse to left the foxes in.
It's true that the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, virtually instructed the Commission to come against the present cozy system of allocating workers to default funds by giving it terms of reference requiring it to "develop alternative models for a formal competitive process for allocating default fund members".
But the commission doesn't have it in for industry funds. It has it in for all funds. Right now the poorly performing default funds get a guaranteed inflow of members. Even with outflows, they can keep operating and keep paying their directors in perpetuity. The commission believes the poor performers are evenly spread through the non-profit, for-profit and corporate sectors. What they have in common is that they are small and won't close.
It has it in for the big funds as well. In an idea to be developed, another report commissioned by Morrison and only hinted at in this one, it wants employer contributions directed to funds through the Tax Office rather than employer by employer.
If that happens, ultra-low cost providers such as New Zealand's Simplicity will be able to enter Australia with minimal administrative costs and steal the big funds' business. The present unwieldy system where each individual employer, no matter how tiny, needs to pay in contributions each quarter not only results in lost super contributions from employers who "forget", it acts as a barrier to entry for really efficient funds able to do things cheaply at scale.
The industry funds will tell you they are closer to their members. They will tell you that super was once an industrial issue. They will tell you there is more to super than cost. But cost is most of it, and competition would serve their members well.
Peter Martin is economics editor of The Age.
