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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  24th of May 2012

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Isherwood: Protect retirements from market meltdown

The government must scrap the compulsory superannuation scam which is flushing Australia’s retirement savings down the toxic sewer of the financial markets, Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood said today.

He called for a return to the “old” Labor commitment of a decent pension system, coupled with a government-regulated system of public credit which would give retirees opportunities for secure investment in Australia’s economic development.

“Compulsory superannuation is one of the biggest hoaxes in Australian history,” Isherwood said.

“Last week’s ACTU congress was a ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’: well-paid union officials/industry super fund board members paid homage to the architects of compulsory super, Paul Keating and Bill Kelty, but the writing on the wall was the billions of dollars being wiped off the super balances of millions of Australians.

“The Keating-Kelty scam herded millions of Australians into the stock market, like lambs to the slaughter.

“Kelty conned the unions into accepting a pie-in-the-sky promise of superannuation in lieu of wage increases; while real wages fell during the Hawke-Keating government, the workers’ money poured into the financial markets.”

Isherwood compared the subsequent trillion plus dollars of super that the Keating-Kelty scheme has pushed into the markets to a Ponzi scheme, where the money being put in makes the investment look much better than it is: “Where would the Australian stock market be without the more than a trillion dollars from compulsory super?” he asked.

Keating’s motive for compulsory superannuation, Isherwood said, was to create a massive pool of funds so private financial parasites like Macquarie Bank could turn Australia into a global financial centre.

He quoted Keating admirer David Love’s book, Unfinished Business: Paul Keating’s interrupted revolution, which recounts on p. 91 that Keating and Kelty were intent on steamrolling union opposition to workers being forced to “save” for their retirement through compulsory super because “unless the growth in savings—and therefore in financial capital—continued to accelerate, Macquarie and institutions like it could not manage to sustain the momentum of the growth in their overseas operations, and Keating wanted these as a new Australian industry.”

Keating’s vision of a “new Australian industry” is described in Edna Carew’s biography Paul Keating: Prime Minister: “A former governor of the Reserve Bank, Bob Johnston, remembers Keating gazing out of a window at the view over Martin Place and Macquarie Street during a meeting at the bank and announcing enthusiastically, ‘This is going to be the Wall Street of the south.’”

Isherwood continued, “Superannuation was never intended to fund retirements, it was intended to fund Macquarie Bank and their cohorts.

“Instead of continuing their betrayal of the workers by forcing the super contribution to 12 per cent and then to Keating’s demand of 15 per cent just to keep propping up his ‘Wall Street of the south’, the government must act now to rescue retiring Australians from the meltdown.

“First, the government must implement a Glass-Steagall-style banking reform, and establish a national bank, as the CEC is demanding in our ‘Develop, or Die’ resolution.

“Second, the pension must be significantly raised, to reflect the actual cost of living, not the lying official inflation figures or distorted ‘average’ wage—Australians pay taxes their whole lives, including to contribute to their own pension, so the pension system must provide a decent living standard.

“Third, a national banking system can give retirees the opportunity to invest in Australian infrastructure development, which investments will be guaranteed by the government; the investments will have a low-interest return which reflects how an economy really works, not the extreme returns of 20 and 30 per cent and more boasted by banks such as Macquarie and the now collapsed Babcock and Brown which bankrupted the economy.”

Isherwood concluded, “The CEC’s policies are based on a commitment to the principle of the common good, which the Labor Party from the time of Hawke and Keating has turned its back on, and which the banker-owned Liberal Party never had. I urge every Australian who supports this call, to take the CEC’s ‘The Future of Australia: Develop, or Die’ resolution to every elected official and community leader in the country, and demand they support it. If we are going to return our nation to the principle of the common good, the people themselves must fight for it.”

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