The opinion piece by wealth manager CEO Will Hamilton in The Australian is a masterclass in the ideological projection of victimhood by the rent-seeking class.
Titled with the breathless assertion that a levy on Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSFs) is “immoral,” the article performs a classic manoeuvre of the neoliberal era: disguising the protection of private profit as a defence of the “little guy.” Hamilton attacks the Commonwealth government’s attempt to fund the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort, introduced after the vast number of financial advice crimes and scandals, and designed to restore trust to this parasitic, rentierist sector.
Hamilton’s outrage ignores the $137.5 million hole in the floor: a deficit caused not by regulation, but by the collapse of firms like Dixon Advisory. The financial advice industry demands the government pay for its the crimes and failures, and hides behind the rhetoric that the levy is a fine or penalty on the innocent SMSF trustee.
The real “immorality” here is the financial sector’s expectation that it can privatise gains while socialising its often criminal, catastrophic losses. It is an example of the “sacralisation of property,” where any encroachment on the massive concentration of vast dynastic, accumulated capital is treated as a moral outrage.
The core of Hamilton’s argument is a tactical deployment of the “human shield” strategy. The financial advice industry, currently facing a $47 million compensation gap (and probably more next year) due to the criminal and professional misconduct and collapse of firms within its own ranks, is loath to pay for its own systemic failures.
Instead of accepting responsibility and collective liability for the “professional” status they crave, wealth managers are hiding behind the human shields — the mythical (manufactured) sympathetic figure of the “mum and dad” SMSF trustee. The average super fund balance is $172,000 — which includes the massive holdings of the ultra-wealthy. Most people have far less.
By framing the levy as an attack on “prudent” SMSFs, the scandal-ridden financial advice industry lobby is trying to hides the reality: SMSFs are predominantly vehicles for the wealthy to minimise tax and accumulate capital, separate from the collective pooling of industry super funds.
To insist that these private pools of capital should remain hermetically sealed from the costs of the market ecosystem they operate within is pure fantasy. It is the demand for a risk-free existence for capital. The financial advisers do not want this deduction to come from their profits, instead the state must absorb the losses caused by the financial advisors. They are demanding a system where fees are collected in good times, and the public and governments must pay when the ultra-rich suffer losses.
Of course The Australian would publish an opinion piece like this — the role of News Ltd and The Australian is to be the PR agency for right-wing financial capital. This is why they present the wealthy reader as a victim (“They are coming for your money!”), reinforcing the persecution complex of the ultra-rich through neoliberal subjectivity where taxation is “theft” and an attack on “aspiration”.
The use of language like “immoral” to describe a regulatory fee is a manipulation of language. It turns a bureaucratic dispute (about which faction of capital is going to pay to stabilise the financial advice market) into a pseudo-ethical crusade to manufacture consent among the right-wing and wealthy readership.
The CSLR exists because the financial market is prone to inevitable crises of speculation and fraud. The collapse of firms like Dixon Advisory (the unspoken elephant in the room) are the inevitable outcome of a “market” that is incapable of self-regulation. The “invisible hand” is always revealed to be a pickpocket.
Hamilton argues that it is “misguided” to ask those “not responsible” to fund the mistakes of others — the complaint of the entire financial advice sector. This is the logic of the gated community. He conveniently ignores that the financial advice sector benefits collectively from the consumer confidence provided by the regulatory state — confidence that the levy provides.
The gated-community is further shown in the comments to the opinion piece, where there is a high degree of class consciousness among SMSF holders. Comments like “The Socialists/communists are coming after every cent” demonstrate how regulatory measures are immediately recoded as existential threats to property relations.
These parasitic financial advisors want the legitimacy of a government-backed system without the cost of maintaining its safety net. After all, the levy is the state trying to patch a broken market that it created to benefit the financial class. This is the hallmark of a “bankruptocracy“, where the financial elite dictate terms to the state to ensure their own insulation from market discipline.
Ultimately, the true immorality is not a modest levy on superannuation assets to compensate victims of fraud; it is the existence of a financialised retirement system that turns basic social security into a casino. The true immorality is requiring such unproductive financial advice and the corresponding collapse-compensation schemes in the first place. The true immorality is the vast concentrated hereditary wealth owned by an ultra-wealthy elite, funded by an upwards tax transfer system, that contributes to the fracturing of Australia’s social contract.
By crying “immoral” at the prospect of paying a fraction of their accumulated wealth to clean up their own industry’s mess, Hamilton and his peers in the financial advice industry reveal their true class interest: the preservation of capital at all costs, shielded by the false rhetoric of victimhood.