ACTION: Demand your superannuation fund does not PROFIT from the oppression of Palestinians

URGENT ACTION: Demand your superannuation fund does not PROFIT from the oppression of Palestinians

IMPORTANT: Please include your individual superannuation member number at the beginning of your email. This identifier needs to be included in your email to your fund so that they know you are a genuine member, however this information is not saved or used in any way by APAN.

YOUR EMAIL WILL NOT SEND UNTIL YOU HAVE ADDED IN YOUR MEMBER NUMBER.

The last thing a supporter of Palestine wants to find out is that their super fund is financially tied up with Israel. Over the last few months tens of thousands of people around Australia have written to their superannuation funds asking them to disclose if they have any investment in companies that the United Nations has found to be complicit in Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

The responses we’ve received from most super funds have been very disappointing with almost all super funds confirming exposure to companies that are profiting from Israel’s crimes. So now it’s time to ramp up the pressure by filing formal complaints and demanding that super funds divest from these complicit companies.

We have put together a template complaint letter and compiled the contact details of most super funds in Australia into an email tool which makes it easy for you to contact your super fund directly.

The template letter urges super funds to immediately divest from any companies listed by the United Nations and any others that are complicit in actions that violate international law or perpetuate human rights abuses. It also asks the fund’s Investment Manager a series of questions about how investing in these companies is compliant with the fund’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy and how their investment decisions around these companies compare to their treatment of companies profiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

My superannuation fund is not listed as an option, what do I do?

If you don’t see your fund on the drop down list, it may be because your fund does not provide an email address but may have a web-based contact form which you can copy the letter into. We have copied the text of the template letter at the end of this page under the heading ‘Letter Template’ and listed the URLs of the ‘contact us’ forms for super funds without email addresses for their complaints team. We hope this makes it easy for you to copy and paste the letter into your super fund’s ‘contact us’ form on their website.

Why are we calling for divestment rather than encouraging people to switch super funds?

Collectively Australian super funds have hundreds of millions of dollars of Australian retirement savings invested in companies complicit in the oppression of Palestinians.

We should expect that our retirement savings are not oppressing Palestinians. The goal of this campaign is for the super funds to change their behaviour, the best way this can happen is we all act together. If an individual chooses to roll over their super to a different fund, this makes a very small difference to the financial position of these funds. This action is targeted to demand super funds completely divest from all those companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine.

By being part of the BDS movement and participating in this divestment campaign, you are joining a collective of people all over the world who are running similar campaigns to ensure that their and our retirement savings are not supporting Israel’s apartheid. BDS campaigns targeting super or retirement funds have had huge wins overseas including in New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Denmark and many more. Our plan is to build on this global pressure and secure similar BDS wins here in Australia.

Please note that any communication from APAN about this campaign is not financial advice. APAN is not providing advice on which super funds individuals should be members of and there can be serious financial implications to changing superannuation funds that individuals must consider. You should not change super funds without specific advice from a suitably qualified professional. Rather than changing super funds, demand your fund divests from companies which are profiting from apartheid Israel by sending a formal complaint now.

If you have any questions or concerns you can contact our team at contact{at}apan.org.au