Neale Prior: There’s a gap in the superannuation market where being bad can be really good for your nest egg

The time is ripe for equal investment opportunity to be given to all those people who don’t think the world will be saved by wind farms, solar panels and electric cars.

There is an opportunity for an amoral or right-leaning business opportunist to set up a retail super fund with investment funds focused on all the unfashionable stuff.

Despite what various idealists and promoters claims will happen over the next decade, there may well be a long future for well-managed coal companies helping power communities in battling countries and turning iron ore into steel.

Gas is a no-brainer for at least a quarter of a century, and the death of oil has been greatly exaggerated.

Never mind that Peter Dutton’s vision for a nuclear future is built on expensive and unproven small reactor technology, uranium will likely be an important part of powering the world in the second half of this century.

To keep dictators and terrorists at bay, western governments will keep throwing trillions of dollars at companies specialising in making the weapons, ammunition, aircraft, vehicles and increasingly-complex technology of war.

There is a capital vacuum being created for those who think socially aware and the environmental, social, and governance agenda is bollocks, or who don’t give a fat rat’s clacker about the planet’s future.

It’s OK if you’re a squillionaire and you have an investment manager who can build you such a portfolio.

It is ridiculously tough for a right-leaning person to do their bit by pumping some extra savings into these saviours of freedom while also maintaining some half-decent balance in their retirement savings.

Yet all sorts of left-leaning agendas are now being peddled by superannuation funds and private investment managers, with investors lured by terms like “sustainable growth”, “ethical investing” and the all-virtuous “ESG”.

We now have the Australian Securities and Investments Commission pulling up super funds and investment managers for suspected greenwashing — the sin of exaggerating the real or imagined virtues of their offerings.

And the ABC has just put the spotlight on various industry funds promoting companies with titles like “socially aware” and “socially conscious” having money invested with weapons manufacturers and military component manufacturers.

All the virtue is being funded by the taxpayers, while those with contrary views are left to babble in the echo chambers of social media.

Sure, you could set up a self-managed superannuation fund and then invest in a variety of exchange-traded funds in the US, and some in Australia, that focus on the nasties such as weapons, petroleum or uranium.

But SMSFs are arguably beyond the patience and investment skills of most people, while not receiving the regulatory supervision given to mainstream super funds by taxpayer-funded agencies.