I have followed with some interest the exchange of articles in Crikey between Stephen Mayne and Andrew Whiley over the past week about the Abbott government’s proposed changes to superannuation governance.

Mayne has focused each of his contributions on Vision Super – presumably given his own connection to local government.  While many of the things he has highlighted about Vision Super have been disparaging and ill-informed, I have tried to resist the urge I have felt after reading each one to respond.

However, that was until reading his surprisingly offensive contribution yesterday.  I say surprisingly because I have always respected the way that Stephen Mayne has been a loud and fearless champion of increased diversity in boardrooms, councils and parliaments throughout Australia.

Yet in asserting (incorrectly I might add) that the APRA enforced ‘fit and proper’ requirements of super fund directors are merely perfunctory, he went on to illustrate this point by highlighting that one particular Vision Super director was ‘a home care worker from the City of Greater Dandenong.’  That was it.  He didn’t mention anything else about her.  It wasn’t that she had done something improper or failed to act in a certain way when required.  It was just that she is a mere ‘home care worker’.

In one sentence, he flippantly dismissed this person – someone who possesses 17 years of superannuation experience as well as broader non-executive organisational governance experience – as possessing no possible qualification or skill to warrant her place around a superannuation board table.

And there lies the very thing at the heart of the equal representation trustee director superannuation model which he and Josh Frydenberg simply do not understand and so eagerly seek to tear down.

It is the connection of this director to the industry and workforce which she serves.  She might not hold several corporate directorships or lunch regularly at Flower Drum but she understands more about her fellow members – the pressures they face, the financial anxiety of approaching retirement, the way some spivs look down on what they do – than Stephen Mayne or Josh Frydenberg ever will.

Stephen Mayne highlights her occupation as the thing which makes it inappropriate for her to sit on a super board, but I see it as the very thing which makes her so appropriate to be there.  Indeed, she works day in and day out in an area of her local council – home care – which accounts for more of Vision’s 100,000 members than any other area.

I have been her colleague on the board of Vision Super for six years and have closely observed the careful and diligent way that she contributes to and shapes debate around our board table – always focused on what is in members’ best interests.  Her contribution is no less than our other directors which Stephen chose not to highlight – including one who was previously a secretary of a state government department and another who led the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) and was a partner in an international law firm.

Millions of Australians are today many thousands of dollars better off than their peers because they have had their super in a not-for-profit fund rather than in a retail fund.  This is an incontrovertible fact that not even the retail funds challenge.  The representative trustee model lies at the core of the reason for this difference in fortunes.

This model has worked so effectively and stood the test of time for the very reason that it places the governance of not-for-profit funds in the hands of directors who are not interested in anything more than maximising the retirement outcomes of their fund’s members.  This is because they typically are members themselves, represent members industrially or employ members.  In each case they are motivated to pursue the best interests of members because of their direct and deep connection to them.

The proposition implicit in the current debate that this makes them non-independent and needing to be reined in, is utterly flawed and misconceived.  These representative directors are in fact the very essence of independence – possessing completely aligned interests to the members which they serve.  It is a refreshing point of difference from directors in the rest of corporate Australia, but one which is now sadly very much under threat.

Geoff Lake is the Deputy Chair and an employer nominated director of Vision Super – a not-for-profit fund managing approximately $8 billion on behalf of 100,000 members who predominately work in the local government and water sectors.  He is also a member of the ALP.  The views expressed in this article are his own.

*This article appeared in Crikey on 9/07/15