APRA not off the hook on super fund flows to unions
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has been placed on notice that the Federal Opposition will continue to press it to do more about the flow of money from industry superannuation funds to the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU).
After pressing APRA to explain payments from industry funds to unions, including the CFMEU, NSW Liberal Senator, Andrew Bragg, took to social media to express his displeasure at the regulator’s attitude.
Bragg prefaced his response to APRA by asking: “When will APRA stop the rivers of gold which flow to the CFMEU from superannuation funds?”
Bragg’s questions asked during Senate Estimates were met by APRA’s refusal to “comment on entity-specific” issues and he was particularly irked by the regulator’s response that “payments passing from trustees may not, in and of themselves, breach requirements of the Best Financial Interests Duty”.
“There may be a range of reasons why payments from a trustee to a union are justified depending on the services performed by the union,” APRA said in response to Bragg’s questions on notice.
Bragg’s question to ASIC had cited specific instances of payments from AustralianSuper, Cbus and First Super.
APRA’s answer followed on from other responses to questions posed during Senate Estimates, including that its two-year investigation into payments from industry funds to union had, so far, cost just $214,000 and involved just three personnel.
In its response to Bragg, APRA said it had and would “continue to probe concerning expenditure practices to form a view on compliance with Best Financial Interest Duties”.
“We expect trustees to have expenditure management processes in place to assess rigorously proposed expenditure and be able to evidence the financial benefits to members,” APRA said.
“As part of its supervisory activities, APRA makes inquiries into certain expenditures to assess the robustness of the trustee’s processes and that the best financial interests of members is the determining factor in a trustee’s decision-making process when exercising their powers.”
“The architecture of the SIS Act does not prohibit specific types of expenditure, and accordingly our Prudential Standards cannot import such an outright prohibition,” the APRA response said.
Corrupt APRA and ASIC will NEVER DO ANYTHING AGAINST best buddies Industry Super.
Let’s see the 2 year Report APRA ???
Or did the CMFEU dog eat your homework ???
So super funds pay unions, And then unions pay the Australian Labor Party. And ASIC and APRA sit on their hands.
What legitimate expenses would a super fund ever have to pay to a Union?
How can industry super fund spend millions on advertising, sponsorships of footy teams, naming rights at stadiums, donations to certain political parties and claim this is in the Best Interests of it members and passes the Sole Purpose Test??????
All this while being deceptive and misleading the public by increasing clients portfolio exposures significantly above stand risk profiles to achieve headline returns which now date back almost 50 years to minimise the losses of the last decade.
The Labour Party that passed legislation to allow this corruption, while APRA & ASIC that turn a blind eye to it all.
Is the CBUS scandal with the CFMEU any real surprise?
I’ve written to APRA on multiple occasions about poor processes in certain Super funds and literally 6-12 months later they go broke or their computer systems fail.
APRA are useless. The three staff working in the Super Fund division must be about 80 years old each, work from home, and most likely works a two day week. If you stuff up in the prestigious Bank division you get transferred to dopey land being the Supersector.
It’s a wonder Labor hasn’t divided APRA into two bodies to create even more public servants. One Unit monitors the Banking sector which performs well and the second is the prudential monitoring of Super funds which clearly is corrupt and or asleep at the wheel….
Keep up the good work Mike. As ex-QLD premier Joe BP would say ‘just feeding the chooks’.
As for Bragg, he just keeps whining and whinging when APRA slogs his all-too easy Qs on notice way over cow corner – every. single. time.
C’on Andrew, maybe have a chat to a half decent bush lawyer about how to better frame your Qs so you aren’t continuiously made to look like a rank dufus by the APRA crew.