What is a super fund & how do they operate?
In Australia, superannuation (super) is a compulsory retirement savings system. Your employer takes money from your wages and places it into a superannuation fund, who then invest and manage your money to provide retirement income later in life. Super funds will invest money into different assets to try and achieve the most amount of money for you – this is called fiduciary duty and technically, it’s a legal obligation. But that doesn’t mean that super funds aren’t also bound by moral and ethical investment obligations.
In short, superannuation provides financial security for us into retirement. The problem, however, is that nearly every single Australian superannuation fund is investing their members money into assets that are linked to srael’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
How are decisions made within a super fund?
- Each super fund has a different set of governing rules, these rules are established by the fund’s governance framework – a dynamic, evolving system of policies, procedures, and decision-making structures.
- A fund’s ethical framework is usually determined by it’s Environmental and Social Governance policy (otherwise known as ESG).. These rules outline the responsibilities of a super fund’s board of trustees and guidance as to how the fund is to be managed.
- Usually, a fund willl outsource the management of its international assets to an external fund manager. But ultimately, responsibility for any dodgy investments remains with the board and the Chief Executive Officer.
Key decision-makers in a fund
A super fund’s board of trustees is ultimately responsible for all key decisions of the super fund, however various other professionals are tasked with aspects of the day to day decision making by the board of trustees. These professionals include:
- Chief Executive Officer
A super fund CEO is responsible for the overall strategic direction, operational management, and governance of the fund to meet its members’ needs. Key duties include implementing the board-approved strategy, overseeing investment management, and ensuring the fund operates within its legal and financial framework, and reporting the fund’s performance to the board. They are the public face of the fund!
- The Board of Directors
A super fund’s board of directors is responsible for the overall governance and management of the fund to benefit its members. Their duties include setting the fund’s strategic direction, overseeing its operations, making crucial investment decisions, and ensuring a robust system for risk management and internal controls is in place.
In an industry super fund, the board is usually made up of representatives from a union, who are meant to represent that industry’s workforce – aka, you!
- The ESG team
An ESG team at a super fund integrates Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into the fund’s investment strategy to enhance long-term returns and manage risk. Their activities include analyzing ESG risks and opportunities within investment portfolios, engaging with companies to advocate for better practices, and sometimes engaging with policymakers on ESG-related systemic issues
Who regulates ethical investment?
- APRA prudential framework for superannuation
APRA provides frameworks that require funds to have robust investment governance and risk managemen strategies. APRA expects funds to identify, assess and manage material risks to member outcomes, which includes ESG and human-rights related risks where they are financially material.
- Modern Slavery Act 2018
Most super funds publish Modern Slavery Statements describing how they identify and address modern slavery risks in their operations and supply chains. This creates statutory transparency obligations relevant to human-rights due diligence.
- UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)
The UNGPs set the global expectation that investment funds should carry out human-rights due diligence. Funds commonly use the UNGPs as the baseline for investor human-rights policies and escalation/remedy expectations.
- OECD / investor stewardship guidance
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provide guidance for institutional investors and set expectations on investor engagement, disclosure and use of grievance/complaint routes.
- Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA)
The RIAA is one of the most important industry-led frameworks guiding how super funds in Australia integrate human-rights considerations into investment practice though importantly, they are not regulators. They set standards for human-rights due diligence, screening and risk management, and reporting expectations.
Why should you engage with your super fund?
Despite a wide range of institutional frameworks that should prevent super funds from investing into things like illegal occupations, nearly every single superannuation fund in Australia continues to invest millions of dollars into companies linked to Israel’s illegal occupation.
In the absence of government action through sanctions, we must use collective pressure to demand our super funds end these investments and stop funnelling millions of dollars of our money into the occupation.
We know pressure works, when we work collectively we wield enormous power. To date, we have already seen several funds decrease or divest entirely due to member pressure.
If your superannuation is managed by a fund that has investments in companies complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, it is important to resist the urge to jump ship and switch funds. Instead, this is the time to double down and organise collectively with other members of the fund to demand change.
Engaging consistently with your fund in as many ways as you can, and bringing new people in to make complaints alongside you is significantly impactful.
Super funds will often try to limit the interactions members can have with them privately – which can make it difficult to pressure them directly about issues like Palestine. But when combined with public pressure, media scrutiny and consistent fear that members will leave the fund, collectively we wield immense pressure over our fund!
What are the effects of my super fund’s investments?
Nearly every single Australian super funds invests into companies that are operating from and enabling Israel’s illegal settlements. These investments actively sustain and legitimise a system of occupation, apartheid, and dispossession, profit from human rights abuses of the Palestinian people and undermine and violate international law.
Sustaining and legitimising Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine:
- Providing investment capital to business entities that sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.
- Legitimising illegal settlements through the implicit approval of investment.
- Normalising illegal settlements as reasonable and ordinary business ventures & signalling to other investors that complicity in the occupation has no consequences.
Profiting from human rights abuses:
- Generating returns from through investment into companies linked to settlement expansion and militarisation.
- Turning systemic human rights abuses into financial gain for members, often without their knowledge or consent.
Undermining and violating international law:
- Contributing to, profiting from and endorsing business activities that are deemed illegal under international law.
- Ignoring and weakening accountability mechanisms that rely on universal compliance and consistent pressure.
What is divestment?
Divestment refers to the withdrawal of investments from companies or entities identified as supporting, profiting from or participating in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. Put simply, divestment is the act of removing or ending investment.
Calls for divestment from business entities complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, human rights violations and genocide of the Palestinian people are led by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement.
The BDS movement is Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality.
Since 2005, Palestinian civil society organisations have called for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel.
The movement is an international peaceful and non-violent effort working to end international support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
How are divestment campaigns effective?
- They apply economic pressure on companies profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation, and disrupt their financial support.
- Creates reputational and political risk for complicit corporations.
- They create a ‘race-to-the-top’ for super funds – once one divests, many others will follow.
- They align with international law by targeting entities involved in violations like settlement expansion and systemic discrimination.
How do i pressure my fund to divest?
Each super fund is different when it comes to the most effective tactics to achieve divestment.
Ultimately, successful member movements for divestment are a result of collective action. As an individual member within a large super fund, it is difficult to illicit change as an individual, however the power we hold as a collective is extremely significant.
We also must not understate the impact persistent and targeted complaints about an issue can have for a fund. Many divestment campaigns have failed because people have given up too early!
By taking action as a collective and publicising the campaign and your super funds failings, it will become increasingly difficult for your super fund to continue to ignore it’s members demands.
In the absence of government sanctions, we must rely on grassroots pressure to push these super funds. While we may not see immediate change, several Australian super funds have already partially or fully divested due to pressure from their members. The tide is turning!
Remember, leaving your super fund too early in the campaign and moving to a more “ethical fund” will alleviate your complicity – but you’ll lose any leverage you have with the fund. It’s far more impactful to stay and agitate for change.
How can I pressure my super fund?
- Email your super fund
You may chose to draft your own complaint email (see page 14) or you can access APAN’s pre-written email template.
- Call your super fund
Super funds usually have a phone line you can call on- but be prepared to wait on hold for a while. This is hugely impactful if you have the time and resources to commit to it.
- Send your super fund a physical letter
You may chose to draft your own complaint letter or you can transcribe APAN’s pre- written email template to send as a physical letter. Sending regular letters alongside other members is great!
- Meet with your super fund
Request a meeting to discuss your demands for divestment face to face.
- Attend your super funds Annual Members Meeting/ Annual General Meeting
All super funds in Australia are legally required to hold an AMM & must provide at least 6 weeks written notice to all members.
The AMM is a rare opportunity for members to ask questions about how their money is being managed in a public forum. The fund is legally required to publish both the questions and the answers within one month of the meeting. We have some suggested questions available for you to use.
We have written guides for each of these tactics, please head to the end of this
document for a list of guides.
What next? Escalating your complaint.
In the event that your fund does not meaningfully address your concerns and/ or divestment requests after having engaged complaint via email, phone, physical letter and/ or in person meeting, the next step is to escalate your complaint.
Contact the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA):
AFCA is a not-for-profit dispute resolution scheme for financial services. AFCA has the capacity to make binding decisions regarding financial firms involved in a complaint. See AFCA’s complaints resolution process here.
AFCA has strict guideline about the kind of complaints it may consider. It is important to frame your complaint such that it meets this criteria.
Complaints must relate to:
- ‘Misleading or insufficient disclosure of investment practices’
- ‘Failure to consider ESG policies that a fund publicly claims to uphold’.
- Breach of trustees duty to ‘act in the best financial interest of members’
- AFCA will only consider complaints relating to a super fund that is a current AFCA member. You can find out whether your fund is a member on their website.
Tips for framing your complaint to address AFCA’s criteria:
- Identify the potential legal and financial risks your funds investments into complicit companies could create.
- Look into your fund’s ESG policies relating to human rights: reframe your fund’s continued investment in complicit companies as failure to uphold ESG commitments constituting misleading investment practices
- Reference UN and ICJ rulings relating to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine to support claims relating to legal risk.
- Remember to include references.
At the end of this guide, we have put together a suggested AFCA complaint guide.
What next? How to Mobilise the Community
Call your fund out on social media
- Find the link to our Digital Action Guide at the end of this document.
Organise within your workplace
If you are with an industry super fund, it is highly likely that others at your workplace will also be members of that fund.
- Spread the word – discuss the issue within your workplace & share what you’ve learned about your super fund’s investments
- Share your journey engaging with your super fund and why you feel it’s important.
- Co-ordinate action-taking together – hold an complaint-making party, set up a petition, or write a letter on behalf of your workplace.
Organise collective action within your union
- Research your funds represented unions and work out who the relevant board members are.
- Attend your next union branch meeting and raise a motion targeting your unions representative on the fund’s board. See our draft motion.
- Launch a petition requesting your unions representative on the board backs your union, and get other members to sign it.
- Write and sign a branch letter to your union leadership, demanding they reflect their members wishes and lobby the fund.
Spread Awareness
- Hand out flyers regarding investments into UNHRC listed companies outside your super funds office. At the end of this document, you will find a link to printable flyers.
- Organise a postering campaign to display information about the campaign in as many workplaces as you can. Use our posters or create your own.
Mobilise your networks
- Discuss the issue and the action you’re taking with your friends and family.
Extra Resources
Guides
Phone Script: Demand Divestment
Write a Letter to Your Fund’s Board.
Guide: Attending your Super Fund’s Annual Member’s Meeting
Union Motion Draft
How-to: Take Digital Action
Printable campaign flyers
Resources
- APAN’s UNHRC database fact sheet
- UNHRC database of complicit business enterprises
- ICJ July 19 2024 Advisory Opinion: Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine
- OECD Responsible Business Conduct for Institutional Investors
- Red Cross: Doing Responsible Business in Armed Conflict
- Red Cross: Corporate War Crime and Other Liabilities
- Francesca Albanese: From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, July
- 2025
- Don’t Buy into Occupation: Exposing the financial flows into illegal Israeli settlements