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The $4.1 billion Auscoal Super has not been named as a default fund under the Australian Industrial Relations Commission’s award modernisation process, and a SunSuper attempt to have itself named as default has been thwarted, after it was deemed unnecessary to add a superannuation clause to the Black Coal Mining Industry Award. The Award was one of only a handful of awards recently revised by the AIRC that did not include superannuation. Colin McGuinness, strategic projects manager at Auscoal, said not being specifically named in the award was not a problem for the fund.
“The trustee of the fund has constituent organisations such as the NSW Minerals Council and the union as its sponsoring organisations,” he said. “Their view is simply that we have existing arrangements in the coal industry which are working very well at the present time which nominate Auscoal as the industry fund for this industry; they see those arrangements as being satisfactory in the current circumstances and they don’t see that the [AIRC] is attempting to disturb those arrangements.” Tony Lally, chief executive of SunSuper, said the bid for coalmining default fund status was an attempt to maintain the fund’s wide representation across all industries.
SunSuper had been named as a default fund in between 150 and 200 of the old state-based awards, and has been named in 17 of the new ‘modern’ awards to date. It competes with AustralianSuper as most-named fund in the new raft of awards. “We applied to have ourselves included in all those awards where we were currently represented to maintain our position,” Lally said. Kieren Turner, chief operating officer at the NSW Minerals Council and alternate director at Auscoal, said the mining award was the first to be modernised. “In relation to super, because of the long-standing customer practice in our industry, it wasn’t felt necessary to [include super],” he said.
“Auscoal is the predominant superannuation fund, there would be a few companies where it wouldn’t be, and they might be companies that have their own in-house super funds, but the vast majority of the companies in the coal industry have Auscoal as the default fund.” The Award Modernisation Full Bench statements reveal that a drafted model superannuation provision was only included in modern awards if those awards already deal with superannuation. “The vast majority of awards in [the mining] industry do not have a superannuation clause,” the Full Bench noted. “Submissions made after the exposure draft was published said little about superannuation.
