It's true that the super industry is set for a massive wave of consolidation if the commission's bold recommendations are implemented.

Many funds will disappear.

But number alone is no guarantee of healthy competition.

Indeed, the commission's analysis has found members could reap significant "economies of scale" savings – particularly in administration costs – if smaller, underperforming funds were forced to merge or close.

Because super accounts are government-mandated products, governments have a special responsibility to play an active role to ensure the money they have forcibly removed from pay packets is being well invested.

It's a role that successive governments – and their appointed regulators – have comprehensively failed to perform. Regulators have for some time had the power to apply a "scale test" to force small, dud funds to close. But they have failed to use it.

For too long, dud funds have hidden behind the excuse that “past performance is no indicator of future performance”.

As a result, Aussie savers have been bamboozled into a position of complete powerlessness, unable to make the call on which funds are better or worse performers. A lack of good data has hindered their efforts.

But through its gruelling year-and-a-half inquiry, the Productivity Commission has interrogated the figures and ferreted out the poor performers.

It knows exactly which funds they are, but has explicitly declined to identify them in its reports, for fear of causing a run on those funds, to the detriment of other unwitting members.

Instead of forced closures, or a messy "name and shame" process, the commission's "best in show" model is designed to knock these players out by default.

Compiling the top 10 list will, indeed, require a panel of truly independent experts, and better data than now available.

But the potential benefits of shifting money out of persistently poor performing funds are large indeed.

Some countries have just one low-cost pension fund, overseen by government.

A top 10 list is a good half-way house, allowing some competition, but also protecting Aussie savers from being placed in dud funds.

The irony is that, based on past performance data, that top 10 will be dominated by the large industry funds that are so closely linked to the Labor movement.

The best funds should have nothing to fear.