“Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.”
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, 1976
Prologue
Australian media reported on 2 October 2026 that the Albanese Labor Government’s Trade Minister, Senator Don Farrell, was quoted as saying “Australian superannuation funds have an obligation to the national interest, to represent the national interest, and to make sure their investments in the United States are boosting Australian trade”.
Farrell’s statement, subsequently criticised by a number of superannuation fund leaders, is just the latest in a succession of worrying statements by the Albanese Labor Government about how it views Australians’ superannuation savings as a source of funding for its policies.
This apparent philosophical approach by the Albanese Government is alarming because the purpose of superannuation funds is to secure the best investment returns for the workers who are, by law, obliged to pay a significant portion of their weekly earnings into superannuation to fund their retirement. The policy objective of compulsory superannuation is to have fewer people relying on the Commonwealth pension.
In terms of Oztopia – the best Australia outcome for Australians that might be achieved – no government would compel the use of superannuation to fund its policies.
Australia’s superannuation savings
Australia has accumulated one of the largest pools of retirement savings in the world.
In 2026, the Australian superannuation sector held approximately $4.5 trillion. That money belongs, ultimately, to Australians saving for their retirement. Superannuation trustees are required by law to exercise their powers in the best financial interests of their beneficiaries.
But increasingly the Albanese Labor Government is talking about superannuation in another way.
It is describing superannuation funds as a source of capital that can help Australia achieve national economic, industrial, security and even foreign policy objectives. These policy objectives are being set by the Albanese-led government.
Over the past three years, the Labor Government has encouraged superannuation funds and other institutional investors to consider investing in its policies on affordable housing, renewable energy, the transition to net zero, defence infrastructure, strategically important assets, artificial intelligence, venture capital, start-ups and other government economic priorities.
In 2026, senior members of the Government went further, describing Australia’s superannuation capital as a “national asset”.
Most recently, in October 2026, Trade Minister Don Farrell raised the possibility of Australian superannuation funds being invested in the United States lamb industry as part of Australia’s efforts to prevent further American tariffs being imposed on Australian lamb. Farrell appears to have raised this prospect without any financial due diligence study or consultation with the superannuation sector.
How did we get here?
December 2023: the aligning of superannuation with national economic priorities
A useful starting point to understand how we got here is 5 December 2023.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers was hosting one of the Government’s Investor Roundtables. More than $2 trillion of funds under management were represented.
Chalmers described the purpose of the roundtable in these terms: “It’s all about trying to align what’s good for investors and superannuation fund members, with what’s good for our communities and what’s good for our country more broadly.”
He went on to say that the Government wanted investors and superannuation funds to work with it to find opportunities where fund members could benefit while the Government simultaneously advanced its “national economic priorities”.
When a journalist asked specifically about getting superannuation money into areas such as net zero and housing, Chalmers was careful to draw a boundary. The Government was not proposing to change the ‘best-financial-interests’ obligation applying to superannuation trustees.
However, Chalmers said: “We believe we can align super funds’ obligations to their members with our national economic priorities.”
The net-zero transformation was identified by the Government as one such opportunity.
That combination of ideas, that superannuation funds can be deployed to meet Labor’s economic priorities, has remained central to the Government’s position ever since.
The Oztopian view is that superannuation funds should remain responsible for their own investment decisions and should seek strong financial returns for their members.
That said, government can seek to create conditions in which investments that advance government policy also become attractive investments for superannuation funds.
Housing
Housing quickly became one of the most obvious examples for directing superannuation.
On 15 January 2024, the Government opened the first round of funding under the Housing Australia Future Fund and National Housing Accord.
The Government expressly stated that the schemes created: “a new opportunity for institutional investors, including superannuation funds, to partner with government to fund homes.”
The stated objective was 40,000 social and affordable rental homes through the two programs.
This did not involve compelling superannuation funds to build houses.
Instead, government policy was being structured to make investment in social and affordable housing more attractive to institutional investors, including superannuation funds.
Renewable energy and the net-zero transition
The same approach has been visible in the Albanese Government’s energy policy.
In March 2024, the Government announced consultation on changes to the annual superannuation performance test.
Once again, the Government said explicitly: “This isn’t about Government directing super investment.”
But it also said that concerns had been raised that the performance test could discourage investment in sectors capable of producing long-term returns, specifically identifying the energy transition and affordable housing.
Then, in June 2024, the Government released its Sustainable Finance Roadmap. Its stated objective included helping to: “mobilise the significant private capital required for Australia to become a renewable energy superpower”.
The Roadmap was designed to help finance Australia’s transition to net zero and encourage capital into climate and sustainability investments.
By November 2024, another Treasurer’s Investor Roundtable brought together investors representing nearly $3 trillion in capital. The Government said the purpose was to “get capital flowing to where it’s needed most in our economy”, particularly housing and cleaner and cheaper energy.
There is a consistent policy thread.
Government identifies a priority.
Government brings large institutional investors, including superannuation funds, into the discussion.
Government then considers regulatory changes, guarantees, co-investment arrangements or other measures intended to make investment in that priority commercially attractive.
The Future Fund provides an important comparison
In November 2024, the Government took a more direct step with the Commonwealth’s Future Fund.
The Future Fund is not a superannuation fund holding individual Australians’ retirement savings. It is a sovereign wealth fund owned by the Commonwealth. The Fund was established in 2006 to strengthen the Australian Government’s long-term financial position by covering the Commonwealth’s unfunded public servant superannuation liabilities.
That distinction is important.
The Government issued the Future Fund with a new investment mandate requiring it to consider national priorities, where appropriate and consistent with achieving strong returns.
Those priorities were:
- increasing Australia’s residential housing supply;
- supporting the energy transition; and
- investing in Australian infrastructure, including economic-resilience and security infrastructure.
Treasurer Chalmers said the intention was to ensure capital was flowing “in the service of our national economic interests”, while maintaining the Future Fund’s primary focus on returns.
The Government can give such an investment mandate to the Future Fund because the Future Fund is a government institution. It cannot, presently, give the same instruction to an independently managed non-government superannuation fund.
But the comparison illustrates the Government’s broader policy view: large pools of investment capital potentially have a role in advancing national priorities as well as generating financial returns.
The Port of Darwin
In April 2025, the concept moved into an area with clear national security implications.
Prime Minister Albanese announced that the Government wanted the Chinese-controlled lease of the Port of Darwin returned to Australian hands. The Government was looking for a private Australian purchaser.
Albanese specifically said: “We are trying to see if there is a private buyer, particularly through superannuation funds.”
The Port of Darwin had been at the centre of national security debate for years because of its strategic location and its long-term lease to Chinese-owned Landbridge Group.
In this instance the potential role of superannuation was extended beyond housing and energy. The Government was publicly identifying superannuation funds as possible purchasers of a strategically important Australian infrastructure asset because the Government wanted that asset returned to Australian control. Again, there was no advice that any due diligence had been undertaken, nor consultation with superannuation funds, to determine if the Port of Darwin might yield a viable return on investment.
Artificial intelligence and new industries
By August 2025, the range of investments under discussion expanded again.
Chalmers convened another Investor Roundtable involving approximately $3 trillion of institutional investment, including major super funds.
This time, one of the main subjects was artificial intelligence (AI) and AI infrastructure.
Chalmers said the objective was to have capital flow more efficiently into investments that could make the Australian economy more productive.
A month later, Prime Minister Albanese was in New York promoting the Government’s Future Made in Australia strategy.
He specifically highlighted Australia’s compulsory superannuation system as a source of capital.
Albanese said Australian superannuation fund investment in the United States was expected to exceed $1 trillion over the decade to 2035.
He then pointed out that those same funds were investing in Australian: “infrastructure, energy, start-ups and private capital.”
Australian superannuation was therefore increasingly being presented not simply as a retirement system but as one of Australia’s significant sources of investment capital.
Defence
The language became even more explicit in April 2026.
Deputy Prime Minister (and Defence Minister) Richard Marles was asked what role private capital and superannuation funds would play in delivering Australia’s future defence capabilities.
Marles said: “they will play a role.”
He then described Australia’s huge superannuation capital pool as: “a national asset that we should use.”
And he added: “without apology, we have sought to pull that lever more.”
Marles estimated that approximately $15 billion of the Government’s $425 billion ten-year Integrated Investment Program could involve alternative financing, while emphasising that the overwhelming majority of defence expenditure would continue to come directly from government.
That was a significant statement.
Superannuation capital was now being discussed in connection with Australia’s defence capability and national security.
Housing, energy, venture capital and start-ups
The Government returned to the superannuation performance test in May 2026. Chalmers said the existing test could discourage investment in: “housing and energy, venture capital and startups.”
He said the Government did not want the test unintentionally discouraging investment in “some of the most important parts of our economy.”
But once again, he drew a boundary, saying: “We have absolutely no intention of directing superannuation investment.”
Superannuation managers and boards, Chalmers said, would continue deciding where members’ money should be invested in order to obtain the best returns for retirement.
The distinction could hardly be clearer.
The Government says it does not want to direct superannuation investment. But it does want to alter the environment in which investment decisions are made so that capital can more readily flow into particular parts of the economy that the Government considers important.
A “national asset”
By July 2026, Prime Minister Albanese was reportedly using similar language to that employed by Deputy Prime Minister Marles.
At an Australian Financial Review Superannuation Lending Roundtable, Albanese reportedly said there was: “a real potential to see these funds as a national asset” that could achieve better returns not only for individuals and retirees: “but for the nation.”
Albanese also reportedly described overseas investments by Australian superannuation funds as providing “hard money to provide soft power”— linking Australia’s enormous pool of superannuation capital with Australia’s wider international economic influence.
This represented a notable evolution in the language surrounding superannuation.
The Albanese Government had moved concepts about superannuation funds from seeking “win-wins” between members and government economic priorities on to senior ministers openly discussing superannuation capital as a national asset capable of serving broader national purposes as set out in the Labor Government’s policies and aspirations.
And now lamb
The latest example is quite different again.
On 2 October 2026, the ABC reported that Trade Minister Don Farrell had raised with the Trump administration a proposal designed to protect Australian lamb producers from the possibility of additional U.S. tariffs.
The proposal could involve Australian investment, potentially including Australian superannuation fund investment, in American meat processing facilities and the U.S. lamb supply chain.
This is not a proposal for superannuation funds simply to finance Australian lamb exports. The idea is more indirect.
Australian capital would potentially be invested in the American lamb industry, strengthening U.S. production and processing while demonstrating that Australian investment can benefit the United States. The Australian Government hopes this could help make the case against the U.S. imposing further trade barriers on Australian lamb.
Farrell’s office confirmed that a possible lamb industry “support package” had been discussed with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Farrell also argued that Australia’s superannuation sector has an obligation to the national interest, although he acknowledged that individual superannuation funds ultimately decide where to invest.
The superannuation industry responded. Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia chief executive Mary Delahunty said that, if investments in the U.S. lamb industry offered good returns, funds could be interested. But she stressed that: “a super fund’s obligation is set in law, and it is to act in the best financial interests of its members”.
She added that supporting Australia’s trade interests could be a consequence of a successful investment, but was not the purpose of investing members’ retirement savings.
So, what is Australian superannuation for?
There are two principles operating simultaneously.
The first is straightforward.
Superannuation exists to provide financial benefits to Australians in retirement. Trustees are legally required to act in the best financial interests of their beneficiaries.
The second is the evolving policy position being articulated by the Albanese Government.
Australia has accumulated an enormous pool of long-term capital. If investment opportunities can simultaneously produce competitive returns for members and help achieve Australia’s economic, energy, housing, technological, defence, infrastructure or foreign policy objectives, the Government believes those opportunities should be facilitated.
Those two principles are not necessarily incompatible.
An investment in renewable energy infrastructure, housing, a port, defence infrastructure, artificial intelligence or an overseas business might be an excellent commercial investment.
The important question is who decides why the investment is made.
Under the current legal framework, that decision rests with superannuation fund trustees acting in the financial interests of their members.
Government can establish policy, change regulation, subsidise projects, share risks, create investment vehicles and encourage funds to participate. But the Government’s repeated statements that it does not intend to direct superannuation investment acknowledge an important boundary. However, its statements indicate it is willing to test that boundary.
What is the Government seeking to achieve by changing the deployment of funds?
Australia’s compulsory superannuation system has accumulated extraordinary financial power.
As the pool approaches five trillion dollars and continues to grow, governments will inevitably be interested in what that capital can finance.
Since December 2023, the Albanese Government’s public statements provide an indication of how that thinking has developed and is being incrementally changed.
First came housing and net zero in 2023.
Then strategic infrastructure in 2024 and 2025.
Then artificial intelligence and emerging industries in 2025.
Then defence in 2026.
Then the description of superannuation as a “national asset” in 2026.
And now, in October 2026, Australian superannuation has been injected into a discussion about protecting Australian lamb exports through investment in the United States.
The Albanese Government is driving debate, advocating a narrative that has become broader than one about particular superannuation fund investments.
It is increasingly a debate about the relationship between Australians’ retirement savings and the Australian national interest, and about where the boundary should sit between the two. And as discussed in my earlier writings, the idea and meaning of ‘the national interest’ are amorphous, open to definition by the government of the day. The Albanese Government’s cloaking of its apparent objective of deploying superannuation funds to enable its ideological policy objectives under ‘national interest’ is a political ploy to access capital.
Critical infrastructure: a special case?
There is a legitimate national interest case for governments wanting deep pools of patient domestic capital. Critical infrastructure requires enormous long-term investment: in energy, telecommunications, transport, water, defence-related infrastructure, cyber resilience and supply chain resilience. Superannuation funds, with long investment horizons and trillions of dollars under management, are obvious potential investors with the additional benefit of sovereign ownership and control.
There is nothing inherently problematic about that. A port, electricity network, data centre, telecommunications asset or other critical infrastructure investment may be an excellent commercial investment for a superannuation fund. The question is not whether Australian superannuation funds should ever invest in assets that are important to Australia’s national security. The question is whether the investment is selected because trustees determine that it is in members’ best financial interests, or because government has identified it as strategically desirable and so directed the investment.
There is a further distinction. Australian ownership does not, by itself, make a critical infrastructure asset secure or resilient. Security depends on how the asset is governed and operated: who has access to its systems and information, where its critical dependencies sit, who supplies and maintains its technology, where control can be exercised, and whether there are concentrations or single points of failure across its supply chain. Changing the source of capital or the nationality of an owner may address one risk, but it does not substitute for effective critical infrastructure risk management.
National interest therefore cannot be reduced to simply directing Australian superannuation capital towards an Australian asset. A stronger national interest test is whether the investment contributes to an asset that is demonstrably secure, resilient and economically sustainable.
Two salutary examples
The Government’s repeated statements that it does not intend to direct superannuation investment acknowledge an important boundary. Government direction would be tantamount to nationalisation, which is the process where a national government takes over privately owned assets, companies, or entire industries and brings them under public ownership and control.
Here are examples where that boundary was crossed into nationalisation with adverse outcomes for people and nations.
Example one: Russia
Russia once operated a mandatory funded pension system under which part of workers’ contributions accumulated as retirement savings. From 2014, further mandatory contributions to the funded component were effectively frozen, with employer pension contributions instead directed into the state insurance pension system.
More recently, Russia has established a state-supported Long-term Savings Program through which citizens can make new savings and transfer existing pension savings into non-government pension funds. By 1 August 2026, almost 1.2 trillion rubles had been attracted into the program. Russia’s non-government pension funds also continue to invest substantial amounts in federal government bonds and corporate bonds. The Russian government is directing the use of these pension savings.
Australia is not Russia, and there is no suggestion that the Australian Government is confiscating retirement savings or yet directing superannuation funds to purchase government debt. The lesson is more fundamental. Once governments begin to regard citizens’ retirement savings as strategically important national capital, the boundary between retirement policy and broader economic, fiscal and strategic policy for the government-of-the-day becomes increasingly important to defend.
Example two: Venezuela
Hugo Chávez’s nationalisation and state control of Venezuela’s oil sector transformed Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) into a fiscal arm of the government, leading to severe institutional decline, economic collapse, and massive drops in production.
Chávez fired about 18,000 skilled PDVSA engineers, executives, and technicians, stripping the state oil company of its technical capacity and operational independence.
Oil output plummeted from around 3.4 million barrels per day in 1998 down to about 1.3 million barrels per day (and lower in subsequent years), driven by chronic mismanagement, lack of capital reinvestment, and declining field output.
Forcing major international energy firms to cede operational control to PDVSA, or accept minority stakes, caused foreign companies to exit, thereby cutting off critical technology and capital.
Chávez redirected PDVSA’s revenues away from infrastructure maintenance and exploration to fund social welfare programs, domestic fuel subsidies, and discounted oil alliances.
The economy became roughly 95% dependent on oil exports, leaving the nation highly vulnerable to global price swings. This severe concentration, combined with production collapse and debt, triggered hyperinflation, widespread shortages of food and medicine, and mass emigration.
Control of this national asset by a socialist government, led by a left-wing populist and socialist, was a disaster for Venezuela.
What is the Oztopian position?
Australian governments are notoriously poor investors. History shows they have not been good at ‘picking winners’ and for this reason alone Australians should resist moves to direct superannuation capital into a government’s policy du jour.
And what of the Albanese Government’s nominated investments?
Housing is a disaster. The Government’s housing policy will yield a small fraction of its intended target, its May 2026 budget decision to cut the discount of capital gains tax has significantly deflated the housing market, its profligate spending over four years has kept inflation high and now contributes to increasing interest rates which will badly impact homeowners and buyers. The Government’s economic settings contribute to excessive costs to construct housing. So, not an attractive investment for superannuation.
Net zero is dead. The major carbon emitters – China, India, the United States – are not acting to enable net zero. The Albanese Government’s ideological commitment to net zero has seen electricity prices increase by approximately 30 percent across Australia from 2022. The Government has established huge off-budget pork-barrels to fund uneconomical green energy projects, wasting billions of dollars that have been detected and likely much more that is hidden off-budget. And given almost all batteries and solar panels are made in China, the Government is funnelling taxpayer money to the economy of Australia’s most significant geopolitical threat actor whilst also presenting them with a huge intelligence dividend and means to bring down Australia’s critical infrastructure at a time of China’s choosing. So, not an attractive investment for superannuation.
Strategic infrastructure sounds a plausible investment, but in the case of the Port of Darwin the Commonwealth, through the Foreign Investment Review Board and the Department of Defence, did not object to the long-term leasing of the port to a Chinese company. The Northern Territory Government got the money and so it is likely they would benefit again, courtesy of superannuation fund members, should the port be forcibly sold in a deal that would not be market value-based but be artificially priced to appease the Chinese. So, not an attractive investment for superannuation.
Artificial intelligence and emerging industries are risky investments and therefore not the type of investments that superannuation funds might normally embrace, or perhaps with only a minimal exposure. One moment the Albanese Government is vilifying AI, in September 2026 telling the United Nations that AI needs to be controlled, whilst relying on AI in the Commonwealth’s 2026 Intergenerational Report asserting it will be the saviour of productivity and the Australian economy over the next 40 years. This is duplicity in action. So, not an attractive investment for superannuation.
Defence is broken. Investing in Defence would be something of a ‘fixer-upper’ opportunity. For most of the 21st century successive Commonwealth Governments have not seen fit to invest in growing and sustaining the Australian Defence Force and defence industry. The Department of Defence has been proven repeatedly, as shown by the Australian National Audit Office research and other reviews, to be incompetent and a poor steward of funds. So, not an attractive investment for superannuation.
This litany of prospective investment horror stories brings us to lamb. Senator Farrell is suggesting that Australian superannuation funds invest in the U.S. lamb industry. Australia is already the largest supplier of lamb meat to the United States (supplying about 80 percent of imports) which would make Australians investing in the growth of a U.S. domestic lamb industry an act of self-harm for our lamb exporters. And all this in an effort to have the mercurial President Trump perhaps, in return for lamb industry investment courtesy of Australian superannuation, reduce the tariffs he has unilaterally imposed on Australia, a key ally. So, not an attractive investment for superannuation.
Then the description of superannuation as a “national asset”. Albanese leads the most socialist and leftist government that Australia has endured. His government’s approach to superannuation is tantamount to nationalisation of superannuation funds. This is a policy objective that has not been put to voters going to an election.
The Future Fund is uniquely at risk, with the Albanese Government already altering its investment governance and objectives. If political priorities progressively displace disciplined investment decision-making, the Commonwealth risks reducing the Fund’s capacity to meet the liabilities for which it was established, while ultimately transferring the financial consequences back to taxpayers.
What can you do to secure Oztopia for superannuation?
Reject any call and action by the Albanese Government (or any government) to direct superannuation funds to enable its policies. Superannuation funds must only invest in the best financial interests of their members.
Write to your Member of Parliament to make clear your position. This is the first step to protecting superannuation as it enables Oztopia.