Member activism could hurt super returns

If we were purists, we would be advocating for centralisation of super. The efficiencies of scale of a single fund with trillions of dollars, and the amazing infrastructure builds that could be undertaken by a government with that resource, would be truly amazing. Or truly horrific, in the case of our current federal government, that would probably gut the great barrier reef and build an iron wall around our borders.

Pity our current federal government is morally void and digging itself into the ground faster than the coal industry itself. After a decade of wishing for the abolition of states, handing their authority to the federal government, I'm now beginning to wonder if it would be better to merge the bottom two levels, with state-local governments such as the ACT proving to be leading the way. The recent divestment decisions of Canberra and Newcastle, along with the more cautious view of the NSW government with regards to resource projects, is rapidly adjusting my views.

Superannuation proves to be a great example of the market-based approach capitalist conservatives have demanded for years. It's ironic they are now fighting against decisions made within a market-based product, when these decisions don't suit them. Health insurance, on the other hand, operates in an illusive market-based approach, with very little transparency, and private hospitals maximizing their claims with little oversight from their members. It is not surprising that the NDIS has much greater transparency, using an allocation-based method requiring the service providers are highly transparent with their patients.

Let us not be distracted by the moans of the lazy and wealthy sitting on the nest egg of hundreds of thousands of people, who throughout history have resisted change, whether they be the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, royalty of the middle ages, the human straight white male healthy supremacists of the more recent centuries, and the resource and investment barons of today.