3rd Jun 2021, 4:51 PM – Representatives Treasury Laws Amendment (Your Future, Your Super) Bill 2021 - Consideration in Detail - Commencement date

The majority voted in favour of disagreeing with amendments introduced by Hughes MP Craig Kelly (Independent), which means they failed.

MP Kelly explained his amendments:

This is very significant legislation that requires an enormous amount of change for the superannuation industry—and much of it justified. However, we are now in June. To have a start date for this legislation of 1 July when it is yet to even go to the Senate is, I believe, rush and haste. When you rush and you do things in haste, you make mistakes. I believe it would be far more prudent and wise of this House if we moved the start date for this legislation to 1 July 2022 rather than 2021. I believe that, if we are doing our job, that would give time for all the vested stakeholders to go through all the detail, and it would be far more prudent for our economy to get the best outcomes, which is what we all require.

Amendment text

(1) Section 2 (Commencement), where the Bill specifies "the day this Act receives Royal Assent" or "1 July 2021", replace with "1 July 2022"

Note: The intent of amendment 1 is to delay the start of all elements of the legislation until 1 July 2022.

What does the bill do?

According to the bill homepage, the bill was introduced to:

• provide that if a new employee has an existing 'stapled' superannuation fund and does not choose a fund to receive contributions, their employer is required to make contributions on behalf of the employee into the stapled fund; and ensure that employers are not in breach of various rules, or are not liable for superannuation guarantee charge, in certain circumstances;
• require the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to conduct an annual performance test for MySuper products and other products to be specified in regulations;
• require trustees of registrable superannuation entities and self managed superannuation funds and directors of the corporate trustee of a registrable superannuation entity to perform their duties and exercise their powers in the best financial interests of the beneficiaries;
• reverse the evidential burden of proof for the best financial interests duty so that the onus is on the trustee of a registrable superannuation entity;
• allow regulations to be made to prohibit certain payments made by trustees of registrable superannuation entities and prescribe additional requirements on trustees and directors of trustee companies of registrable superannuation entities;
• allow contraventions of record-keeping obligations specified in regulations to be subject to a strict liability offence; and
• remove an exemption from disclosing information about certain investments under the portfolio holdings disclosure rules.