When union boss Paddy Crumlin appeared at an international labour conference last month, he entered smiling to the strains of the 1997 hitCrumlin, who led the merger of the Maritime Union he leads with the scandal-plagued CFMEU in 2018, had reason to grin.investment decisions to another fund, Hostplus, and formally merged with it two years later. But this week Crumlin was back as a super fund director. The CFMEU had picked him as a director of Cbus, the building industry superannuation fund.
But as the $3.9 trillion sector’s coffers have swelled, with big industry funds such as AustralianSuper , Cbus and CareSuper counting memberships up to 3.4 million people, the level of oversight that model delivers has come under greater scrutiny. Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, the opposition assistant spokesman for home ownership, says the sector’s board model, in which union and industry representatives oversee funds rather than typical corporate directors, is no longer fit for purpose. “There is an unmanageable conflict of interest between the interests of unions and workers,” Bragg says.
Super Consumers Australia chief executive Xavier O’Halloran, whose group represents people with superannuation accounts, says the “partisan debate” over Cbus should not be the main focus. And there is evidence they are delivering on the goals Paul Keating had in mind when he set up the superannuation system: ensuring comfortable retirements and reducing the burden, over time, of the aged pension on federal government coffers.
“They do so by deeply understanding their members and the workplaces in which their members work – they know exactly whose money it is they are stewarding.” A Cbus spokesman said in a statement that having equal employer and employee representation on its board had ensured its success for 40 years, and it was pleased to welcome the three new directors.