Barnaby Joyce has blasted the government for failing to support thousands of Australians left in financial ruins after the $1.1bn collapse of Shield Master Fund and First Guardian.
The One Nation MP fired up on the scandal – even including a derogatory slur against Lebanese Australians – on an episode of a new Choice podcast series investigating how the collapse of the master funds, which left 11,000 Australians losing their retirement savings, happened.
Joyce revealed he gave his ex-wife Natalie $400,000 as part of their divorce settlement, but it was now gone as a result of the collapse.
Joyce said an investigation had expanded to include more people who now knew they were implicated rather than a couple of individuals.
“This is widening the net, a whole heap of people now know they’re in the s**t,” he said on the podcast.
‘Rather than just saying, ‘Oh, these two ... this group of Lebs and these other people have stolen the money and we’ll never see them again.’”
He called on the government to pay victims their super so they could retire rather than provide a fraction of the money they lost through a compensation scheme.
“What (parliament) don’t understand is we have nurses, teachers – these were not people taking extraordinary risks – they were taking what they thought was a diligent and prudent investment.
“They seem to lack the humanity to understand that these people now have no money, they will be waiting tables, a retired teacher. What else they’re going to do?”
Mr Joyce said the thousands of victims did not have the resources to pursue legal action against those responsible and were relying on the government to pay them out.
“The government talks about super all the time … If what you say is true and authentic, then surely you would go to these mums and dads, pay them out their super so that they can retire … and then go in hot pursuit of the criminals.
“I’m really losing confidence that you know what you’re doing.”
Choice has teamed up with Super Consumers Australia for the new investigative series with journalist Jarni Blakkarly, uncovering how the collapse of Shield and First Guardian unfolded.
It devastated the future of 11,000 Australians who were hounded into handing over their life savings.
Blakkarly said people interested in a superannuation health check were funnelled into the funds essentially through cold calling.
“People were moved into these high-risk investment funds and they raised a lot of money,” he said.
“That money was spent on high-risk investments, things like offshore hotel developments and a Lamborghini that was bought for one of the directors.
“Another director allegedly used the money to help pay off the mortgage of his property, the mansion he lived in.
“A lot of questionable stuff that people really wouldn’t have expected when they invested their money.”
Blakkarly said ASIC now had 14 ongoing court actions against 31 different individuals related to the two funds.
“A lot of the court action hasn’t concluded yet. Some people have had their licences to operate as financial advisers revoked, but in terms of real accountability, there hasn’t really been much on that front yet,” he said.
The real stories behind the scandal are the thousands of victims who lost their retirement nest eggs.
“There are some people who lost more than a million dollars. People have lost insane amounts of money and the security that comes with being able to support yourself through retirement,” Blakkarly said.
Super Consumers Australia Chief Executive Officer Xavier O’Halloran said victims had been fighting a long-running battle for justice, compensation and stronger laws.
He said while the government had been listening, it was up to parliament to stop this from happening again, and politicians needed to pass laws without weakening protections.
“There is a compensation scheme that has been set up, but so far no one has been paid out of that,” he said.
“It is a long process and it only gets a fraction of people’s money back to them. It is capped at $150,000.
“We are talking about people who were on the verge of retirement and had saved enough to see them through the final decades of their life but are now staring down the barrel of having to continue working into their 60s and 70s to make ends meet.”
Mr O’Halloran said the funds were able to operate without proper safeguards and scrutiny and ultimately proved far more speculative than the products people believed they were being sold by financial advisers.
“It was a huge amount of money flowing into these two managed investment schemes in a short space of time before anyone was able to realise what had gone wrong,” he said.
“It was all channelled through these sales that signed up people through social media, so people were getting ads on Instagram and Facebook.
“They were encouraged to leave their contact details to see if they could be in a better investment option with their super, they were able to get access to people at scale.
“We heard millions was pumped into social media ads in order to get these ads in front of people.
“They were able to sell this product en masse in a really quick space of time before regulators and others had time to respond.”