Morrison governmentâs magical super thinking
Thereâs a fatal flaw in the Callaghan retirement income review: its conclusion depends on people being able to buy a financial product that doesnât exist.
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Reading the breathlessly awaited Callaghan retirement income review, itâs hard not to think of that Grimmsâ fairy tale where a hapless girl risks being put to death unless she is able to spin straw into gold.
Now, the challenge facing former Treasury heavyweight Mike Callaghan wasnât quite this formidable, nor the punishment for failing as dire.
The government set the super review by former top bureaucrat Mike OâCallaghan the daunting task of showing that people could live perfectly comfortably on a fund built from 9.5 per cent contributions, and it succeeded â but thereâs a catch. Â
Banking royal commission recommendations flounder, two years on
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FebFebruary 2021 at 1:44am
The Government has, on some counts, only implemented just over a third of Kenneth Hayne s recommendations so far.
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Key points:
Of its 76 recommendations, only about one-third have come into law
Some key protections have been downgraded or abandoned
Two years ago, the final report of the banking royal commission exposed a culture of rapacious greed, of profits and shareholders being put before customers and the law.
But there has been slow progress to fix the scandals exposed.
The aftermath of the 2018 probe killed the careers of the chief executives and chairs of several of Australia s top banks: AMP, NAB and Westpac. Court battles against IOOF, NAB, the Commonwealth Bank, Allianz and more have been won, lost or are ongoing.
This is the first meeting of the Reserve Bank this year, and with the economy recovering solidly, could it mean an interest rate rise sooner than expected?
Mortgage Business 03 February 2021
The customer-owned bank has announced that it is to start trading under a new name and call itself a bank by the end of the year.
Credit Union Australia (CUA) has announced that it will begin trading under a new name, Great Southern Bank, as it moves to cater to a younger audience.
CUA’s CEO, Paul Lewis, said the bank had conducted research which showed that it needed to change its name from a ‘credit union’ to a ‘bank’ due to younger adults not having a strong understanding of what a credit union was or how it operates.
Super has its problems but itâs far from a bad deal
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Anyone following the often-partisan debates on superannuation could be forgiven for thinking the system is in need of radical reform.
The truth is that our retirement savings system is the envy of most of the developed world. There are problems, for sure, but it is far from a dud system for fund members.
Chant Westâs Ian Fryer says there are some myths about superannuation that need to be cleared up.
As the system has grown â it now oversees about $3 trillion in retirement savings and is one of the largest in the world â its importance has seen it move to centre stage of the political debate.