This is an edited transcript of Jeremy Cooper's radio interview with Geraldine Doogue on ABC's RN Saturday Extra Programme recorded on 16 September 2023.
Jeremy Cooper is a former ASIC Deputy Chair, former Chairman of Retirement Income at Challenger and chaired the 2010 Federal Government Review into Super.
Geraldine Doogue: The Labor Government has tabled a bill in parliament formally describing the purpose of the superannuation system, building on a definition offered by the Morrison Government. Jeremy Cooper has been deeply involved in the industry's development over many years.
Jeremy, why do we need a newly-defined or fleshed-out definition, given that we had one just a few years back, about which we talked to you for this 30-year-old system of ours?
Cooper: Yes, it does seem like an odd question. Indeed, 30-odd years ago – and I'll call out one specific instance when the legislation creating compulsory super was passed in 1993 - Treasurer John Dawkins tabled a report that was called ‘Security in Retirement: Planning for Tomorrow Today’. When you read that document, it seems obvious that the people involved in writing it that knew exactly what super was for. They’d be somewhat bemused that here we are 30 years later defining a purpose.
It's all about politics. The vast sum of money in super has become more and more contested. I suppose that's modern life, isn't it? Everything's contested, and super is no exception, and so it gets pushed and pulled in all directions. “It should be doing this, it should be doing that, people should be able to access it for housing” and so on. And so, what this purpose does is gives super some sort of direction to point in.
Doogue: What are the words being used?
Cooper: Well, look, the words are worth reading. It's only one sentence.
“The objective of superannuation is to preserve savings to deliver income for a dignified retirement alongside government support, in an equitable and sustainable way.”
It picks up all the key words, and it's nice and sharp. So, as a set of words, I think it's excellent.
Doogue: And is it very different from the Morrison Government one?
Cooper: It is. The Morrison version was missing a lot of those adjectives. So, it was too anodyne. It didn't have any ambition in it, I think, was probably the main criticism. When you look at words like equitable, dignified, sustainable, they are sort of ambitious. Now there are critics who say those words will cause trouble, they'll cause arguments, but I think it's landed in a good place.
Doogue: There are now regular reports of how big super is investing its money. Apparently, it's put a lot into our much-discussed electricity transmission systems. AustralianSuper's $2.5 billion investment in a European data center, Vantage Data Centers, is causing comments. Now, would you say from your observation that priorities are shifting, the bigger the system gets?
Cooper: They are. But if we're talking about the single biggest issue facing us at the moment, it is climate change. And a system like super requires growth to derive profits to then pay back to retirees for the money they sacrificed into super. And growth is largely from economic activity involving the emission of carbon, such as building, agriculture, extraction of coal, steel.
Doogue: So, it's our modern world.
Cooper: It's our modern world. And a system that benefits from that growth and economic activity for our wellbeing, I think carries an obligation to reach the 2030 targets, which in Chris Bowen's language, are “ambitious but achievable”. I think it's going to be very difficult for an economy like Australia's to get there. And I think the super system needs to do a lot more than just outsourcing these issues to some relatively small so-called proxy advisors.
Doogue: Greg Combet’s remarks were interesting. "One of the things in my mind is to be thinking about how we can open up investment opportunities for commensurate risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors, including super funds, to be in the energy transition in a more significant way, to be in the decarbonisation process by taking stakes in companies or being lenders to assist that happening, to co-invest with institutions like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. But that's something we've not unlocked yet." Now, are you hearing other views like that, Jeremy?
Cooper: Absolutely. We're seeing overseas participants cutting our lunch again in our market. So, a lot of the players doing wind and solar and investing in projects like in Gippsland, they’re Canadians, the Danish. We need to be careful that we participate accordingly.
Doogue: But the question is, are they giving their recipients back in Canada and Denmark full bang for their buck for their investment, for their retirement? I mean, this is the great question. By doing this, do we need some form of co-investment by government capital in order to be sure that we're not selling our retirees short? Are our policies and approach keeping up with the sheer scale of this industry?
Cooper: It wasn't so obvious in the most recent Intergenerational Report. But certainly, in the previous one, the sheer projected scale of the super system was almost terrifying in future dollars in the 2060s. It will be 10 times the size of the existing system and would dwarf the stock exchange and GDP. Now, to date, we've only had positive impacts from such a large amount of money that's not under the government's control. The flows of capital in super, where and when capital is allocated, are not really under any sort of regulatory control. When the GFC happened, the Australian super system repatriated vast amounts of capital that was overseas, and it was then used for everybody's benefit, but certainly for the system's benefit, to recapitalise our banks and major companies and so on. That was an incredibly positive outcome. The danger is that if we're not careful, we're not watching what the negative implications of such free-flowing capital that's very large versus our economy.
Doogue: What do you mean?
Cooper: Well, at the moment, our annual GDP is about $2.5 trillion and the super system's at $3.5 trillion in round terms. Switzerland, Canada, the Netherlands and us are in that elite league where we have pension systems that are big in relation to our economies. There are very few big countries in this position.
Norway is a really good example of where they have a sovereign wealth fund and rather than giving the oil wealth away to companies and so on, they kept it for Norway and put it into a vast fund to when the oil ran out, they'd have all the wealth. What they said though was not one Kroner of that was allowed to be invested in Norway because of that relationship between the huge pot of money and a much smaller economy. But we're approaching a world where we have this awesome amount of capital, and half of it is already invested overseas for that very reason.
Doogue: And what about the way we govern it? You've also been talking about that, just whether we're structurally ready within government for this type of challenge. Treasury governs super policy, doesn't it?
Cooper: It does. And that's relatively unusual around the world. So, in China, in the US, it's the Department of Labor. In the UK, it's the Department of Workplace and Pensions. It's unusual to have such a large pension system in policy terms within Treasury where it's not even a second-order issue, it’s more like a ninth-order issue. And I'm not being critical of Treasury, but there are millions of other jobs that rank ahead of looking after the super system. And this might be a reason why we keep having all these ad hoc reviews. If you look over the last decade, we've had significant reviews done outside Treasury, into the system.
Doogue: So, what do you think ought to be happening? Because what you are describing is coming, it's this giant thing on the horizon. And anybody who wants to be powerful or influential in the future in Australia will need some involvement with the super industry, because it's just going to be this giant pot of money.
Cooper: It seems to be the case. It would be very expensive and tedious to reengineer it, and with all of the other priorities, probably doesn't rate highly enough. I've always thought that the super industry ought to have a more formal relationship with the Reserve Bank. And I don't want to get too technical here, but much like the way that the banks themselves can access emergency capital from the Reserve Bank by holding bonds to trade with the Bank, the super system could have a similar relationship, and that would be one piece of engineering that I would push strongly forward.
This is an edited transcript of Jeremy Cooper's radio interview with Geraldine Doogue on ABC's RN Saturday Extra Program recorded on 16 September 2023.
Jeremy Cooper is a former ASIC Deputy Chair, former Chairman of Retirement Income at Challenger and chaired the 2010 Federal Government Review into Super.