Good morning pintahoo, thanks for your response. To clarify my...

Good morning pintahoo, thanks for your response. To clarify my comments about the only difference being costs etc, was in relation to comparing the returns by a SMSF and any other, with the same investment in it (which is quite possible and reasonably common, I believe.
Yes, there is more to it but not in the context I was using.

I agree about not looking worse than the competition, certainly in a lot of the default or standard options. Many public offer investments are usually 'benchmarked', some are to a broad index, a few aim for 'absolute returns' i.e. get the best return they can within a particular market or strategy, within certain risk parameters i.e. they won't put it all on 'black'. Often I believe the public confuse the 2 intentions.

I don't think it is relevant to compare average default fund returns with SMSF's because they are much different in size and therefore usually how they are managed/choices made.
The more logical comparison would be with Wholesale Super Funds with balances over, say $400,000. From the little I know, I believe there are much less just sitting 100% in a default / balanced fund (more like TD's, smaller company funds, Asian shares etc) so would have different returns to the 'average', maybe more, maybe less, but probably different. Either way, SMSF's with direct property would skew the results as they generally don't revalue regularly.
As for Trustees being 'sharper tacks', I'd think so, on average.

I understand Industry Funds are bleeding large balance accounts to SMSF's, so are in competition.
As for the ATO, you'll need to enlighten me on how SMSF's get more favourable tax treatment than other Super Funds.
I thought they all operated under the same tax regime. Please explain......

Cheers and enjoy your day