Bikie gangs are nothing compared to superannuation funds - Senate Speech 25 Oct 2022

Chamber Senate on 25/10/2022
Item: REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS - Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Amendment (Annual Members' Meetings Notices) Regulations 2022 - Disallowance

Senator RENNICK (Queensland) (17:52): What would you call the offspring of communism, Marxism and fascism? Of course, the answer to that is superannuation. First of all, it's communism because in 1992 Paul Keating introduced superannuation that takes the workers' wages. He didn't give them a choice. It started at two per cent. He said, 'We're going to give it to someone you've never met, and there's no guarantee you're going to get it back when you're 60.' Just like the vaccine mandates. That money was taken from them. If Paul Keating had taken that to an election, do you think it would have got up? Absolutely not. If Paul Keating had said in 1992 that by 2025 you were going to have 12 per cent of your wages taken out—wages of workers, mind you, who build this country. This country was built by the battlers, not by the blowhards who are sucking $30 billion of fees out of superannuation ever year. It was built by the battlers.

I still argue it is a breach of the Constitution. You are taking away their property rights without any guarantee that they will get the capital returned to them when they are 60, discounted for present value. Communism. Marxism. What we've got now is industry super funds, and BlackRock and Vanguard in the private sector. I'm not doing this from an ideological Left versus Right platform. I'm doing this from the view point of the big guy versus the little guy: the little guys who get up every day, get out of bed and put their nose to the grindstone. They get the lowest wages in this country, and you're ripping off 12 per cent of their income to give it to someone they've never met so they can gouge $30 billion in fees every year. What you've done is taken that money, which is 'unelected' money, and there's no control over how it's spent. The superannuation boards are not elected by the members. That undermines all the powers of the individual in how their money is spent. Then the superannuation funds appoint their own directors to appoint their own ideological agendas.

Read more at https://gerardrennick.com.au/bikie-gangs-are-nothing-compared-to-superannuation-funds/