From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamiot. It's Thursday, November fourteenth. Top barristers say abolishing cross examination of alleged rape victims prior to trial would tilt the scales of justice against defendants. The landmark legislation proposed by the Victorian government aims to prevent retraumatization of alleged victims, but some silks say robust measures are already in place. That exclusive story is live right now at The Australian
dot com dot AU. Australia's corporate watchdog says it also avails superfunds after it was revealed one fund failed to pay out death and disability benefits worth millions of dollars. In today's episode, what's going on at SABUS and why it could be a problem for the government. I don't feel like my husband would all stay with them if he had known this was going to happen. This is Karen Redhead, a mom of three girls from Perth. She's
speaking with The Australians reporter Mackenzie Scott. Because it did feel to me like they were purposely denaying things.
I felt like it was making it excessively dissicle.
And Karen's husband, Jamie Bell, a fire sprinkler fitter and the family's breadwinner, died in twenty twenty two after a three year battle with a rare form of cancer. And my case looked simple because I was the executor of the will.
I was his only e, a wife, the only ever mother of his children, so.
It was like their most easiest case. And I was also listed as a beneficiary on his seabuff account.
Sea Bus is an industry superfund with just under a million members, working mostly in the building and construction sets. How long would it take them to pay.
You out in the end, it was just over ten and a half months after he died.
On Tuesday, it was revealed sea Bus has left thousands of its members in the lurch. Many of them are grieving families like Karens, or people with disabilities.
Oddly enough, a whole lot of admin winter diity don't realize that there.
It was something I didn't think would be at hard.
And having extra things to deal with in that time is really difficult.
It's a time when you really want.
Your life to be simple as possible, Like it's impossibly hard, and I don't think if anything, anyone could imagine.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission, also known as ASSEK, is taking sea Bus to the Federal Court over allegations it failed to pay out thousands of death and disability claims worth twenty million dollars for more than a year. The regulator is also alleging SeaBus was aware of the backlog but failed to take the necessary steps to fix it. Plus, it says seabus's trustee breached its legal requirement to notify ask of the issue within thirty days of it coming
to light. That means some of the country's most vulnerable people could still be waiting for their entitlements.
But it's as bad, I think, as we've seen really, and it's from a fund that's already in trouble on several fronts.
James Kirby is The Australian's Wealth Editor and the host of the Money Puzzle podcast.
There are quite literally a string of regulatory issues now emerging with Cebus. APRAA is also looking at what they call questionable expenses I'm quoting those words, and they're also looking at links for CFMU. So there is a storm basically of issues now swirling around SeaBus.
Last December, SeaBus filed what's called a each report to ACIK after being pinned by the watchdog. In that report, the superfund claimed its members were waiting on about twenty million dollars in benefits, but Asak alleges, Sebus got it wrong and the real figure could be up around a billion dollars.
Well, we listened to the regulator. It's pretty carefully and they don't often do this. But if a regulator actually casts out on the estimate of how many people and more importantly, how much money was due here and didn't get sent out to people, then we'll take them seriously. So we'd have to think that the amount in question here is a lot more than we were given to believe at the start by Cebus. Most people don't pay attention really until they begin to worry about their money
in the fund. That's what people really care about. So the issue with CBUS and this particular scandal is it is to do with money. It's not so obscure issue
who are some political bondfight at this big superfund. It's to do with money that people were old and the period of time they had to wait for that money and linked with this is that just recently, and it's not a coincidence that on the money front, on the financial side of things, one of the big ratings group, morning Star, recently downgraded the c bus from average to below average, and that's an embarrassment, I think for a top fund like this, But it does tell us that
the issues at Cebus are now becoming financial.
Sebus apologized for the bungle, saying it was sorry for the delay in processing claims made by bereed families and people with disabilities, and it says it's cooperating with the regulator in hopes of resolving the dispute outside court. Plus the ninety four million dollars super fun says it's put mechanisms in place to clear the backlog of delayed payments and pay compensation to its most severely affected members.
There is no way out now for Cebus because though they will say that they are cooperating, and if they are, it will be a fresh start for them, because clearly the ACIC people the regulators say that they weren't cooperating up until now, and basically between the lines, what they're saying is there was no good reason why this money wasn't handed over to the people that would do the payments,
So that's a real issue for them. And I think one of the outcomes of this story will be that people are starting to realize, especially people in big funds, that they're on their own, that the big funds are something of a loan to themselves, and when things go wrong, they don't tell anyone of the things go wrong to the extent that they inform the public. They just inform the people who are affected. And that's not good enough when you're talking about an industry that's now three point
five trillion. There's nine hundred and thirty thousand people alone inside These are enormous, enormous funds, and once upon a time they could get away with this sort of thing, and I think now they're front and center that everybody has to pay eleven and a half cents in every dollar you make, by law, has to go into one of these funds. It's just not good enough that there isn't a regulator right on top of this. And one of the problems is that the funds have become so big,
they're big fish in a small pond. There's different regulators doing different things, and Basically it falls between the cracks and that suits big funds just fine until it's sorted.
On Wednesday, Asik warned SeaBus might not be the only superannuation fund mishandling members entitlements. The Watchdog's deputy chair, Sarah Court, said it's conducting deep dive surveillance of other super trustees in light of the allegations against sea Bus.
She wouldn't say it on it, she had some evidence from their earlier work that it is an industry wide problem. If the system could allow ce Bus not to pay people the money that they would due they're own members, then of course similar issues will lurk inside other funds. It's completely deducted that that would be the case.
Coming up. What Wayne Swan's Labor Maids think about this brush with the Corporate Watchdog. Wayne Swan has been the Labor Party's president since twenty eighteen. He's also the chairman of the underfire superfund Sebus. He's been an outspoken critic of badly behaved companies for much of his career in politics and in the corporate world.
When companies are raarding the system, they give a green light to everybody else to get in there and to do the same now. The business community in Australia cloised to a group of honist tax paying corporate citizens. Many are, but some are not.
When news of the SeaBus scandal broke, many of Swan's Labor Caucus colleagues backed him in saying it wouldn't be necessary for him to step down, but others suggested the former Treasurer should appear in front of a Senate committee to answer questions about how and why millions of dollars in benefits were withheld from grieving families and people with disabilities. Coalition Senator Andrew Bragg is chair of the Economics References
Committee and Deputy Chair of the Economics Legislative Committee. He told The Australian he's open to it, saying Wayne Swan has never shied away from a public debate. In the past, Treasurer at Jim Chalmers, who counts Wayne Swan as a mentor, has been reluctant to weigh in.
Now those allegations are before the court is now and the standard practice which I'm adhering to today again is comment on that before the course. That would be an inappropriate thing to do, but I'm a strong supporter of our regulators. Where they find issues that concern them, they shoult take them and that's what's helping now.
Some have pointed out the contrast between Labour's dogged pursuit of other corporations currently facing legal action for alleged misleading conduct, like Colds and Woolworths.
Broadly, I think people feel that Wayne Swann has a degree of distance from the situation itself.
Sarah Eisen is a political reporter with The Australian.
Often, chief executives are the ones who really handle operational sorts of things and who are often held responsible, whereas chairmen or chair women are a bit further removed. So for that reason and for a few others, including that members of the labor Caucus and the union movement have felt satisfied with how the whole thing has been handled so far that there hasn't been a huge amount of appetite for Wayne Swan to step down, even temporarily while
the investigation by Assex into Cebus takes place. However, there have been a couple of voices who said it's not even about it being Wayne Swan's fault, It's simply about distraction and distraction is the last thing labor needs right now.
So that's why Wayne Swan, in the view of some Labour people I've spoken to, should step aside temporarily to avoid any chance of distraction just a few months out from an election, and when Adsony Abernezi is really struggling to land the reset that he's really been trying to land in recent weeks.
Sarah Eisen is a political reporter with The Australian and James Kirby is our Wealth editor and the host of the Money Puzzle podcast. Public sector pay has surpassed private salaries for the first time since twenty twenty. That's according to the latest Wage Price Index figures. You can read our experts analysis right now at the Australian dot com dot au