Josh Frydenberg

For every government that wants to work alongside superannuation funds, there’s one waiting in the wings to deliver a regulatory rebuke. Big super needs to think hard about its plans to build the future.

The last nine years of government have been characterised by a deep-seated suspicion of the country’s largest investors. But with Labor back in power, the super wars are almost certainly over.

Plenty of big super funds have announced their intention to dump their Russian assets, and the government wants them to. But saying do svidanya is harder than they thought. From a certain angle, there’s a lot of Russia in the super system. Once ruled by unapologetic socialists, they’ve both become capitalistic in the aftermath of…

Australia’s superannuation system is leading the world in pensions, but the broader market is still missing opportunities on stewardship and technology. The Thinking Ahead Institute’s 2022 Global Pension Assets Study has named Australia the world’s number one pension market, with 20-year pension asset growth of 11.3 per cent per annum in US dollar terms. The…

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s proxy reforms have been blown out of the water. The question that remains is why they were ever proposed in the first place. The decision to disallow Frydenberg’s proxy advice regulations marks the end of a deeply weird saga where Treasury tried to annihilate an entire industry – that barely anybody had…

Opposition to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s proxy advice reforms is growing, with one key Liberal senator questioning his use of the regulations power and warning of a possible disallowance. While not disagreeing with the reforms in principle, senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells – head of the standing committee for scrutiny of delegated legislation – questioned why Frydenberg had…

Josh Frydenberg’s unilateral changes to proxy advice regulation look increasingly unjustifiable. The question that remains is why they were forced through in the first place. The changes, rammed through in late 2021 using regulations powers, will make it nearly impossible for the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) to operate with a requirement that it…

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has sidestepped the Senate to push through controversial reforms to proxy advice, casting the future of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) into doubt. The reforms were pushed through using regulations powers in late December, at a time of year when much of the financial press is winding down and after…

The Morrison Government wants to present a small target on superannuation at next year’s election. But Labor has big ideas for the sector that could be impossible to match. Superannuation might well be the Liberal Party’s Moby Dick. It’s a popular policy inextricably tied to Labor and the union movement, and while they can barely…