Steve Bracks, super funds must be "run only to benefit members" - how do top 3 stories on your super-funded news website fit?
Saturday, 16 April 2016
Yesterday The Australian published an opinion piece by the Chairman of CBUS Steve Bracks - CBUS published it as well here.
The Bracks piece coincides with a submission from CBUS to the Federal Treasury on the question - what is the objective of superannuation?
That submission is signed David Atkin, CEO CBUS. His first paragraph:
"Cbus is run only to benefit members" (of the fund)
Bracks runs the same line in his piece for The Australian - including the Labor cop-out that some people are not capable of making an "informed choice" about how to spend or save their own money.
Finally the government should acknowledge that we must continue having Australians’ retirement incomes managed by organisations whose first loyalty is to fund members and the financial returns on their investments not shareholder returns. This is particularly necessary to protect the retirement savings of those who don’t or feel unable to make an informed choice of fund.
Let's look at "only to benefit members". Is that what we see from CBUS with its ties to the CFMEU?
Here's the front page of the CBUS website as I write.
See the box on the right there -
Click on it and you're taken to online newspaper The New Daily http://thenewdaily.com.au
Its website says:
The New Daily is a trusted source of national news and information and is provided free for all Australians.
The New Daily delivers the day’s most relevant news – national, state, world, finance, sport, entertainment, lifestyle, weather – in text, pictures, audio and video. Written and edited by media professionals, it provides objective coverage of each day’s biggest stories. It aims to provide fair, balanced and unbiased coverage of major events around the world and across Australia.
Our team of top editors and journalists, headed by Thomas Hunter, publishes throughout the day across desktop, social, mobile and tablet. The site is backed by members of the Industry Super Funds network, including Australian Super, Cbus and Industry Super Holdings.
It's a full-on online news outlet, funded by CBUS and its mates. Those super funds run only to benefit members, right?
Where does The New Daily sits editorially?
That first promoted story today is ancient, a complete beat-up, misleading in the title - but it's anti-LNP and that got it to the top of the Steve Bracks pops.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the former Seinfeld star-turned Emmy winner for playing US President Selina Meyer in comedy series Veep, has taken a swipe at our PM.
In an interview with the New York Times to promote her role as vulgar Meyer in a new season of Veep, the actress was asked if it startled her to see real-life politicians replicating the absurd things she’s done on Veep.
“It does freak me out, particularly when you see where this season is going,” Louis-Dreyfus said.
“Certainly, some of the material that’s out there, that’s happening as we speak, if we put that into a script we might get notes back from HBO saying, ‘It’s too broad.’ ”
When it was put to Louis-Dreyfus that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had “copied one of the show’s campaign slogans almost word for word”, Louis-Dreyfus added, “Unwittingly. We were ‘Continuity With Change’, he was ‘Continuity and Change’.
The actress didn't take aim at Turnbull. She sat down for an interview in the US about her TV show. Even when she was asked about Turnbull she added "unwittingly" about the copying allegation. And that's taking aim?
Today we also hear that union corruption will not be the real election battleground.
And this on "Man of Steel" Bill Shorten protecting Australian industry
The fight over Labor’s plans to save the Australian steel industry, announced this week, highlights a tension that has grown within many economies since the global financial crisis.
That tension is between which delivers more of ‘what the people want’ – free trade, or political intervention.
The logic of globalisation and free trade has dominated in economic circles since the 1980s, yet politicians know that voters often ‘irrationally’ want things the market can’t deliver.
For one example, look at Japan’s bountiful and often beautiful agricultural landscape.
Bill Shorten, man of steel
This kind of thinking has clearly influenced Labor’s view of the steel industry. The politics of avoiding ‘shutting down the steel industry’ trump the economics of buying cheaper steel from abroad.
To prevent Arrium (formerly OneSteel) shutting down its Whyalla operations, the ALP has announced a package of protections that Treasurer Scott Morrison has slammed as worthy of a “1950s-era communist dictator”.
The plan aims to “maximise the use of local steel through existing measures that are already in place, and which are entirely consistent with our trade obligations, through the enforcement of Australian standards, tougher anti-dumping rules and broader use of Australian Industry Participation (AIP) plans”.
ENDS
Run only to benefit members Steve? I haven't started on the CFMEU links. Stand by for Part Two.