Superannuation and the quiet capture of Australian politics

Compulsory superannuation is rightly regarded as one of the great economic reforms of modern Australia. It helped millions of Australians accumulate retirement savings, reduced future reliance on the age pension, and transformed Australia into one of the world’s largest pools of worker capital. It was a serious reform, implemented by serious people, during a serious period in Australian public life.

That should be acknowledged at the outset.

The argument is not that superannuation is bad. It is not that workers should be denied retirement savings. It is not that unions have no legitimate place in Australian life. The argument is more subtle, and more important: a reform designed to secure workers’ retirements may also have created a vast architecture of institutional power that appears to benefit one side of Australian politics more than the other.

That proposition deserves serious investigative journalism before the next federal election.

From Deferred Wages to Political Power

Australia’s superannuation system is now immense. APRA reported total superannuation assets of approximately $4.5 trillion as at December 2025, with annual contributions of $220.8 billion, including $156.3 billion in employer contributions. Each year, enormous sums flow, by law, from employers into a system of funds, trustees, directors, administrators, consultants, advisers, campaigners, industry bodies and affiliated institutions.

The phrase “rivers of gold” is often used loosely in politics. In superannuation, it approaches literal truth.

Those rivers began as deferred wages. Over time, they may also have become deferred political power.

The Hawke–Keating reforms did not emerge in a vacuum. They were part of the broader settlement between the Labor government and organised labour during the 1980s and early 1990s. The Prices and Incomes Accord began in 1983. Award-based superannuation expanded through the 1980s. The Superannuation Guarantee was legislated in 1992. The basic compact was that workers would moderate wage claims in return for a broader social wage and long-term retirement savings.

There was much to admire in that settlement. The Hawke–Keating era, followed by the Howard–Costello years, represented a period in which Australia largely functioned as a mature democracy should. From 1983 to 2007, power oscillated between parties either side of the centre line. Labor modernised the economy. The Coalition consolidated many of those reforms, restored budget discipline, and governed in a broadly centre-right tradition. There were differences, serious ones, but the centre held.

That is not where Australia now finds itself.

When the Centre No Longer Holds

This is not intended as a narrow political point. It is a broader concern about national balance, institutional competence and civilisational confidence. Many Australians who consider themselves centrists now struggle to recognise the centre line at all. They look at the present political landscape and see not healthy contestability, but drift, fragmentation and an increasingly ideological public culture.

Since October 7, 2023, many Jewish Australians, and many non-Jewish Australians who stand with them, have formed a grave view of the current Albanese Labor Government. Their concern is not merely that the government has been ineffective in responding to the antisemitism and social fracture that have followed. Some believe the government’s language, omissions, policy choices and moral equivocations have contributed to the permissive environment in which those problems have worsened.
That is a serious charge. It should be made carefully. But it should not be dismissed.

If opinion polls are to be believed, the current government may be returned. If so, Australia may not have the luxury of several more election cycles to correct course. The dangers now visible in Australia are also visible in the United Kingdom and Canada: three countries with deep Westminster traditions, inherited liberties, shared assumptions about social trust, and governments that many citizens now believe are moving too far from the sensible centre.

History may judge these administrations harshly. It may judge them not simply as governments that made mistakes, but as governments that failed to understand the civilisational inheritance they were entrusted to protect.

That is why the health of the opposition matters.

At the 2025 federal election, Labor won 94 seats in the House of Representatives, while the Liberal–National Coalition fell to 43 seats, down from 58 at the previous election. The Liberal Party itself was reduced to 18 seats. The Coalition’s primary vote was fractured across Liberal, National, LNP and other conservative formations, while One Nation polled almost one million first preference votes nationally.

This is not a healthy balance. Australia now has a dominant Labor government facing a weakened and splintered opposition. The Liberal Party has been losing seats to Teal independents in affluent urban electorates while also bleeding disillusioned conservative voters to One Nation and other parties on its right. Caught between these pressures, parts of the Liberal Party appear tempted to move leftward in pursuit of Teal voters while leaving parts of their historic base politically homeless.

That is bad for the Liberal Party. More importantly, it is bad for Australia.
A serious democracy needs a serious opposition. Not a rabble. Not a permanent protest movement. Not a party so unsettled by media criticism that it forgets what it exists to conserve. And not a fragmented right-of-centre landscape in which voters who broadly share concerns about national identity, free enterprise, border integrity, social cohesion, family formation, institutional trust and cultural confidence are forced into mutually destructive competition.

In the period from roughly 2005 to 2007, there was much about Australia that I and many others wished to conserve. The country was prosperous, confident, cohesive and largely sensible. The electorate had every right to choose a change in government in 2007. That is democracy. But there has been a gradation since then, and not all of it has been healthy.

The centre line has shifted. The Overton Window has widened in one direction. Institutions that once claimed neutrality have become increasingly ideological. The ABC often appears less like a national broadcaster and more like the left in camouflage. That is not merely a complaint about tone. It matters because public institutions help determine what is treated as respectable, what is treated as dangerous, and which political alliances are permitted without ritual denunciation.

This is why the right of politics must think strategically.

In my view, parties on the right should preference each other. Liberals should preference One Nation where appropriate, and One Nation should preference the Liberals where appropriate. This does not require merger. It does not require agreement on every policy. It does not require abandoning judgement about individual candidates. But it does require resisting the predictable name-calling from the left, much of the media, and the ABC.

The virtuous second-order effect may be that Labor is encouraged to shift rightward towards the centre line. A stronger, more coherent opposition would narrow the Overton Window, force Labor to govern closer to the broad Australian middle, and restore healthier democratic competition.

But electoral strategy is only part of the answer.

The Institutional Pipeline

The deeper issue is institutional power.

The question that now requires serious investigation is whether Australia’s compulsory superannuation system has contributed, directly or indirectly, to an uneven political playing field. Not simply through declared donations. That is too narrow a lens. The more important question is whether superannuation has helped build a permanent Labor-adjacent ecosystem: boards, directors, executives, consultants, union officials, campaign professionals, policy advisers, affiliated organisations and advocacy bodies whose careers and institutional power are sustained outside the ordinary market disciplines faced by small business owners, professionals, volunteers and community campaigners on the centre-right.

The point is not that every person in this ecosystem is a villain. Many are competent. Many are sincere. Many funds have delivered strong returns for members. The point is structural.

If compulsory worker savings flow into funds with historic and ongoing links to unions, and unions are structurally aligned with the Australian Labor Party, then the political benefit may not appear primarily as a direct donation from a super fund to the ALP. It may appear as something more diffuse but more durable: employment pipelines, board influence, professional networks, related-party payments, advertising capacity, research bodies, campaign infrastructure and permanent institutional legitimacy.

That is harder to measure than a cheque. It may also be more important.
There is already enough evidence to justify journalistic investigation. APRA publishes fund-level superannuation statistics, including detailed data that serious journalists could mine fund by fund and year by year. Reports have previously raised questions about payments from super funds to unions, marketing and sponsorship spending, and the governance of particular industry funds. APRA has also imposed additional licence conditions on some trustees and scrutinised governance and expenditure-management practices in parts of the system.

This should not become a crude anti-super campaign. It should become a serious investigation into democratic fairness.

The relevant questions are straightforward.

How much money flows from industry super funds to unions, union-linked entities, employer associations, industry bodies, research groups, advocacy organisations and campaign-adjacent bodies? Which unions receive payments? What do those unions then contribute to the ALP in affiliation fees, donations, staffing, campaign support or conference influence? Which former Labor politicians, Labor staffers, union officials and progressive campaign professionals occupy board, executive, consulting or advisory roles in the superannuation ecosystem? What are they paid? What related-party transactions exist? What sponsorships, advertising campaigns or public-policy interventions align with Labor or union interests?

These questions are not conspiratorial. They are democratic.

Nor should the centre-right be spared scrutiny. The Liberal and National parties have often failed to build institutions of comparable seriousness. They have relied too heavily on election-cycle campaigning, wealthy donors, local volunteers and the assumption that sensible Australians will eventually return to them when Labor overreaches. That may once have been enough. It is not enough now.

The left builds institutions. The right too often wins elections and then goes home.

If Australia is to function properly, both sides of politics need access to talent, policy development, communications capability, legal advice, campaign infrastructure, training pathways, intellectual seriousness and civic confidence. A country suffers when one side has a permanent professional ecosystem and the other side has volunteers trying to hold the line after work.

That is why the superannuation question matters.

A level democratic playing field is not only about campaign advertising today. It is also about the strategic pipeline of tomorrow’s talent. Who is trained? Who is employed? Who is promoted? Who sits on boards? Who learns governance? Who develops policy? Who builds networks? Who can spend years working inside aligned institutions without having to survive ordinary market competition? Who is available, experienced and connected when government changes?

These questions go to the machinery beneath politics.

Time to Follow the River

Australia functions best when parties oscillate either side of the centre line. Hawke and Keating pulled Labor towards economic seriousness. Howard and Costello governed from the centre-right while preserving much of the reform settlement they inherited. That was a healthier Australia. Governments changed, but the country broadly held together.

Where we have landed presently is much worse: a dominant Labor government several postcodes left of the centre line, a weakened opposition, a splintered right, Teal insurgencies in once-safe Liberal heartland seats, One Nation drawing disaffected conservative voters, and public institutions that too often treat centre-right cooperation as illegitimate while progressive institutional coordination is treated as normal civic life.

Nor do I wish to see Australia’s Parliament resemble Israel’s Knesset, with many minor parties, constant coalition contortions, and the national interest weakened by fragmentation. That is not progress. It is regress, and it is the nation and her people who suffer.

The aim should not be permanent right-wing government. That would be as unhealthy as permanent left-wing government. The aim should be democratic contestability. Labor should have to win from near the centre. The Coalition should have to earn government from near the centre. Minor parties should influence the debate without destroying the possibility of coherent government. And no compulsory savings system should quietly strengthen one political tribe at the expense of national balance.

Superannuation began as a promise to workers: accept deferred wages now and build security for retirement. That promise must be honoured. But if those deferred wages have also helped create permanent political advantages for unions, Labor and their affiliates, then Australians deserve to know.

Before the next federal election, serious investigative journalists should follow the rivers of gold.

Not with slogans. Not with partisan hysteria. With documents, disclosures, board appointments, payment trails, related-party transactions, union affiliation records, director histories, advertising accounts, sponsorship agreements and employment pathways.

Australia will be better for the sunlight.

The river is vast.

It is time to ask where it flows.

Colonel Michael Scott CSC Ret’d is a former Australian army officer and the founder of The 2023 Foundation, an initiative dedicated to combating antisemitism.