“Cbus is now required under the licence conditions to publish the report,” it said. The fund is expected to release the report on Tuesday.
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On Friday, Swan said the fund had handed APRA the independent report by Deloitte, after the regulator last week slapped down Cbus for appointing Paddy Crumlin, Jason O’Mara and Lucy Weber to the board, saying the fund had not satisfied the licence conditions because the review was not yet made public.
“There was some urgency to make those appointments, and we did so correctly after performing fit and proper processes,” Swan said, in reference to the Superannuation Industry Supervision Act that requires industry funds to have an equal number of employer and union representatives and for vacancies to be filled within 90 days.
“APRA has the Deloitte report, and they will deal with it within the time frames they decide … I’m in continual conversations with APRA, and those conversations are ones that I hold with them in a confidential way.”
The former treasurer also defended the appointment of Crumlin, who was previously chair of Maritime Super, which was ranked as the worst default super fund in the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s first annual performance test in 2021.
He said Crumlin had “extensive experience” in running funds, and characterising the performance of Maritime Super as a reflection of his competence was unfair. Swan also said O’Mara had extensive governance skills, having gone on an education assignment to the United States and upgrading his finance qualifications.
In response to questions from Bragg about whether Cbus would continue to donate to the CFMEU, which has been placed into administration, Swan said, “all our partnership agreements at the moment with the CFMEU are suspended, subject to the independent inquiries that are going on.”
He said the $2.3 million in payments Cbus made to the union were “partnership agreements,” and he was confident the Deloitte review would “demonstrate they are successful programs which deliver good value.”
“Rather than spending that amount of money in other areas, such as advertising, what we are getting here is very good bang for our buck, which, if it were a retail fund, they would be spending on advertising and other forms of promotion,” Swan said.