Tuesday, 22 January 2019
One of the most blindingly obvious truths about Australian super funds
The 16 Industry
SuperFunds operating in Australia are run only to benefit members, have
low fees and never pay commissions to financial planners.
They have
long had the reputation of performing well for members, so that a worker retires
with a larger super balance than if he/she had joined a retail fund.
Needless to say that reputation is pooh poohed by a good many Liberal and Nationals politicians whenever the subject of compulsory superannuation came up.
It appears that it will now be harder for those same politicians to take that attitude now.
The Australian, 19 January, p.5:
Every one of the 50
worst-performing balanced superannuation investments over seven years has been
operated by retail funds such as ANZ, Westpac and IOOF, with just one
product offered by the for-profit sector making it onto the list of the top 135
performers.
In revelations that
categorically bring to an end the fierce three-decade dispute between retail
and industry funds over which is superior, secretive and highly
detailed industry data obtained by The Weekend Australian shows that regardless
of the investment timeframe or level of risk involved, retail funds are
unquestionably consistently at the bottom and industry funds are
consistently at the top.
Despite every worker
being forced to divert a portion of every pay packet into compulsory super since
it was introduced in 1992 — and the key choice most people face being whether
to invest in an industry fund or a retail fund — no list of
worst-performing super investments has ever been made public, with
analyst companies refusing to release them.
Retail and
industry funds account for more than $1.28 trillion of the nation’s
retirement savings and the revelations back renewed calls from federal minister
Kelly O’Dwyer this week for the creation of a Future Fund-style national
retirement fund to keep the nation’s super savings out of the
hands of the “many rent seekers and ticket clippers” in the sector.
The highly detailed data
from SuperRatings, considered the most comprehensive and accurate in the nation
and used by the Productivity Commission in preparing last week’s report into
the $2.8tn sector, lists 278 “balanced” super options offered by the
nation’s retail and industry funds.
Over the seven years to
March 2018, of all funds in “accumulation” phase, where the member is
still working, the 50 worst-performing were all operated by retail funds and
all but one of the 17 worst performers were managed by Westpac’s BT or ANZ’s OnePath….
Retail funds have
for many years argued APRA data showing their poor performance can’t be used to
judge them because it looks at only the overall performance of “funds”, which
usually operate numerous different investment options.This SuperRatings data
specifically examines those individual options, negating that argument.
Monday, 21 January 2019
Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety now underway
Commencing in
2016-17 when Australian Prime Minister and Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison was then just the Federal
Treasurer he cut $472.4 million from Aged Care funding over four years, then
followed that up with a $1.2 billion cut over the same time span.
When deteriorating
conditions in nursing homes around the country began to be reported in the
media and the Oakden scandal came to light in 2017, concerned citizens began to call for a royal commission.
The Liberal
Minister for Aged Care and Liberal MP for Hasluck Ken Wyatt was of the opinion that such an inquiry would be “a waste of time and money”.
Once Scott
Morrison realised that ABC Four Corners was about to air an exposé on aged care provision he quickly changed his mind and announced the Royal Commission into Aged Care
Quality and Safety on 16 September 2018.
The Royal Commission
into Aged Care Quality and Safety was established on 8 October 2018
by the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, His Excellency
General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd).
The Honourable
Richard Tracey AM RFD QC and Ms Lynelle
Briggs AO have been appointed as Royal Commissioners…
The Commissioners are
required to provide an interim report by 31 October 2019, and a final
report by 30 April 2020…
The Commissioners were appointed to be a Commission of inquiry, and
required and authorised to inquire into the following matters:
a. the quality of aged care services
provided to Australians, the extent to which those services meet the needs of
the people accessing them, the extent of substandard care being provided,
including mistreatment and all forms of abuse, the causes of any systemic
failures, and any actions that should be taken in response;
b. how best to deliver aged care services
to:
i.
people with disabilities residing in aged care facilities, including
younger people; and
ii.
the increasing number of Australians living with dementia, having regard
to the importance of dementia care for the future of aged care services;
c. the future challenges and opportunities
for delivering accessible, affordable and high quality aged care services in
Australia, including:
i.
in the context of changing demographics and preferences, in particular
people's desire to remain living at home as they age; and
ii.
in remote, rural and regional Australia;
d. what the Australian Government, aged
care industry, Australian families and the wider community can do to strengthen
the system of aged care services to ensure that the services provided are of
high quality and safe;
e. how to ensure that aged care services
are person‑centred, including through allowing people to exercise greater
choice, control and independence in relation to their care, and improving
engagement with families and carers on care‑related matters;
f. how best to deliver aged care services
in a sustainable way, including through innovative models of care, increased
use of technology, and investment in the aged care workforce and capital
infrastructure;
g. any matter reasonably incidental to a
matter referred to in paragraphs (a) to (f) or that [the Commissioners] believe
is reasonably relevant to the inquiry.
A preliminary
hearing was held in Adelaide on 18 January 2019.
At this
hearing the Commissioner Tracy stated
in part:
The
terms direct our attention to the interface between health, aged care and
disability services in urban, regional and rural areas. These issues
necessarily arise because of Australia’s changing demography. We are also
required to look at young people with disabilities residing in aged care
facilities and do our best to deliver aged care services to the increasing
number of Australians living with dementia. Part of our task is to examine
substandard care and the causes of any systemic failures that have, in the
past, affected the quality or safety of aged care services. We will consider
any actions which should be taken in response to such shortcomings in order to
avoid any repetition. This will necessarily involve us in looking at past 25
events. There have been a number of inquiries which have considered matters
that, in certain respects, fall within our terms of reference. We are not
required by the Letters Patent to inquire into matters which we are satisfied
that have been, is being or will be 30 sufficiently and appropriately dealt
with by another inquiry or investigation or a criminal or civil proceeding. As
a general rule, we do not intend to re-examine matters which have been
specifically examined in previous inquiries. We do, however, expect to examine
the changes and developments which have followed previous inquiries, as well as
the extent to which there has been implementation of recommendations from those
inquiries. Where we have different views, they will be made known.
According to ABC
News on 18 January 2018: Out of almost 2,000 Australian aged care
providers invited to shed light on the sector ahead of the royal commission,
only 83 have been forthcoming with information, the Adelaide inquiry was told.
The
Guardian on
18 January reported: Counsel assisting Peter Gray said the
commission had received more than 300 public submissions since Christmas Eve
and 81% concerned provision of care in residential facilities, with staff
ratios and substandard care the most common themes. The
federal health department has also passed on 5,000 submissions it received
before the commission’s terms of reference were set.
Commission will continue to accept submissions until at least the end of June
2019.
Details on how to make a submission can be found here.
USA 2019: crazy continues to be order of the day (Part Three)
A look at the US politician so many Australian Liberal and Nationals MPs and senators admire and seek to emulate....
Daily
Kos, 12
January 2019:
Most of Donald
Trump's $35 million in real estate deals in 2018 came with a huge political footnote
attached to them. A Forbes analysis found the largest deal, yielding
$20 million to Trump, came from the sale of a $900 million
federally subsidized housing complex in Brooklyn in which the
Trump Organization had a 4 percent stake.
The Department of Housing &
Urban Development had to approve the sale. In other words, the Trump
Organization, which is still owned by Trump, needed permission from HUD, which
reports to Trump as pr*sident, to turn a profit through a Brooklyn real
estate deal. And guess what: HUD greenlit the deal.
Trump also took
in another $5.5 million from 36 units sold in a 64-story Las Vegas
tower. The catch? About a third of those units were bought by buyers hiding
behind limited liability companies so they wouldn't have to disclose their
identities. In 2017, USA Today reported that during the two
years before Trump became the GOP nominee, only 4 percent of Trump’s building
units were acquired by LLCs. So now that Trump's pr*sident, anonymous
people are lining his pockets with real estate purchases cloaked through LLCs.
Remember when Trump made
a big show of stacking up all the paperwork he was signing in order to supposedly clear up his conflicts of
interest and forfeit management of his businesses? Yeah, he's still
getting that money.
Sunday, 20 January 2019
South Australian Liberal Government attempting to erase state Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin from memory
However this Royal Commission did not convene until after the March 2018 South
Australian general election at which time a Liberal Government was in power.
This same Liberal Government headed by SA Premier and Liberal MP for Dunstan Steven Marshall is now trying to come to the aid of the beleaguered Berejiklian and Morrison governments (facing their own elections in March and May 2019) by attempting to make Royal Commission correspondence, hearing transcripts
and final report fade from view as soon as possible.
This move is not going down well with the Royal Commission.......
Murray-Darling
Basin Royal Commission Report update
18 January 2019
The Murray-Darling Basin
Royal Commission report is being finalised to deliver to the South Australian
Governor by 1 February, 2019.
There has been an
exchange between the Commissioner, Bret Walker SC, and the Attorney-General’s
Department (AGD) in relation to the public release of the report.
The AGD indicated on 17
January 2019 that the Commissioner’s report will be made available on the
website for the Department for Environment and Water. The Commission has also
been advised that the Commission’s website (containing transcripts of hearings,
Commission exhibits, and other documents) will remain “live” until 30 March
2019, following which an archived copy of the website will be held by the
National Library.
By way of response dated
18 January 2019, the Commissioner:
ADVISED that the report
should be released immediately after delivery to the Governor as the “public
interest demands it”;
CALLED for the
Commission’s website to remain available to the public for a year after release
of the report to provide key background information and permit full
understanding of the Commission’s report, and
ADVISED he would be
willing to accept a limited extension of time for the Commission to consider
and report on the recent issues concerning fish kills in the Lower Darling
River.
The Commissioner said
that “the public expenditure on the Basin Plan (and this Commission) is such
that the only legitimate expectation is that my findings, conclusions,
recommendations and the reasons for them should all be available to be read,
considered and criticised, once I have delivered the report ... The national
implications of the report’s subject matter are also a reason for the report to
be made available for consideration and criticism without delay”.
The relevant
correspondence is attached.
Level 9 East, 50
Grenfell Street, Adelaide SA 5000
For more information
please contact:
GPO
Box 1445, Adelaide SA 5001
Catherine
Hockley Email: mdbroyalcommission@mdbrc.sa.gov.au
Media/Communications
Adviser Telephone: 8207 1483
Email:
Catherine.hockley@mdbrc.sa.gov.au Toll free: (from landlines) 1800 842 817
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See the
correspondence here
South Australian
Attorney-General Vickie Chapman has responded to the Commissioner's letter. See
the correspondence here
Australian Federal Election Campaign 2018-2019: the lying continues......
Trump acolyte
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison
promised a presidential-style election campaign and he is delivering .
Like US President
Donald Trump, Morrison is lying shamelessly……..
The
Guardian, 14
January 2019:
Scott Morrison has
elevated an obscure bill to ban cosmetic testing on animals to one of the top
two legislative priorities for the Coalition in 2019, according to his office.
Speaking to ABC News
Breakfast on Monday, the prime minister cited “environmental legislation …
[that] is important for native species” as among the government’s priorities
for the new year, second only to national security.
There is no major
environmental legislation before parliament and the prime minister’s office was
unable to immediately identify what he was referring to.
Morrison’s comments also
caught conservation groups offguard.
Five hours later, a
spokesman for Morrison told Guardian Australia the prime minister was
“referring to the agricultural
and veterinary chemicals legislation amendment”.
The bill – introduced by
the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, in October – makes
minor changes to the regulatory scheme for agricultural and veterinary
chemicals to provide simpler processes for chemicals of low concern.
The federal policy
director of the Wilderness Society, Tim Beshara, told Guardian Australia the
bill had “stuff-all to do with native species”, a sentiment echoed bythe
Australian Conservation Foundation nature campaigner, Jess Abrahams.
An hour after this story
was published, the prime minister’s office clarified the first statement was in
error and claimed Morrison had in fact been referring to the Industrial
Chemicals Bill 2017.
That bill establishes a
new regulatory scheme including banning animal testing for new chemical
ingredients of cosmetics from 1 July 2018. It passed the lower house and was
introduced to the Senate in October 2017 but appears not to have been debated
since then.
Abrahams said: “As far
as we are aware, the main government policy relating to native species is the
plan for a one-stop shop for environmental approvals, which would have the
effect of weakening environmental protection.”
“The government also has
a targeted review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation
Act for farmers, which could also weaken protection of the environment.”......
In September a Senate
inquiry investigating fauna extinctions heard that a large proportion of staff
working in threatened species management rated
the government’s performance as “poor or very poor”.
The union representing
staff said 91.3% of those who responded to a survey said the government was
doing poorly or very poorly in fulfilling domestic and international
obligations to conserve threatened fauna and 87% believed the adequacy of
Australia’s national environment laws – the EPBC act – was poor or very poor.
Beshara accused the
government of failing its statutory responsibility to fund and implement
endangered species recovery plans. He called on the government to put “some
serious funding towards saving some endangered critters and plants”.
“I am more than happy to
brief the prime minister on what the government needs to do for native species
if he would like.
“He might be surprised
to know that the
Darling River crisis is only one of many ecological crises happening
in Australia right now on his watch. It’s a real mess out there.”
Saturday, 19 January 2019
Tweets of the Week
Yep, they stopped the boats in Tilpa.#MurrayDarlingBasin #auspol #watertheft #fishKill pic.twitter.com/YQ2vmwwDt5— River Country (@RiverCountryFoE) January 18, 2019
Believe it or not, when the rivers full the need a levee bank at the top of this ramp.— River Country (@RiverCountryFoE) January 18, 2019
Tilda, NSW#FishKill #MurrayDarlingBasin pic.twitter.com/5dSboH3WyN
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