Live cross to ABC reporter Alex Beech at Parliament House. Wayne Byers has been...

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1 MON 05 NOVEMBER 2018 Mediaportal Report Live cross to ABC reporter Alex Beech at Parliament House. Wayne Byers has been... ABC News, Sydney, News Breakfast, Michael Rowland, Virginia Trioli, Del Irani and Paul Kennedy 05 Nov :13 AM Duration: 1 min 31 secs ASR AUD 16,809 National Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X Live cross to ABC reporter Alex Beech at Parliament House. Wayne Byers has been reappointed as the chair of APRA and given more money despite criticism from Banking Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the decision will provide stability and continuity of leadership while extra funding will allow the agency to build expertise in areas like cybersecurity and financial technology. Meanwhile, Labor has been pushing for a say in statutory appointments. 190,000 All, 94,000 MALE 16+, 91,000 FEMALE 16+ Also broadcast from the following 22 stations ABC (Hobart), ABC (Darwin), ABC (Sydney), ABC (Brisbane), ABC (Adelaide), ABC (Melbourne), ABC (Perth), ABC (Canberra), ABC (Regional Queensland), ABC (Regional Victoria), ABC (Regional NSW), ABC (Albany), ABC News (Melbourne), ABC News (Regional NSW), ABC News (Brisbane), ABC News (Adelaide), ABC News (Perth), ABC News (Regional Queensland), ABC News (Hobart), ABC News (Canberra), ABC News (Regional Victoria), ABC News (Regional West Australia) The Federal Government re-appointed Wayne Byres as APRA Chair. The Australian... ABC Radio Sydney, Sydney, 07:00 News, Newsreader 05 Nov :04 AM Duration: 0 min 36 secs ASR AUD 10,061 NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X The Federal Government re-appointed Wayne Byres as APRA Chair. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is also set to receive an additional $58m to help it detect and prosecute misconduct. The Banking Royal Commission's interim report was critical of APRA but Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says Byres deserve to stay. 149,200 All, 63,700 MALE 16+, 80,300 FEMALE 16+ Interviewees Josh Frydenberg, Federal Treasurer Also broadcast from the following 12 stations ABC Central Coast (Erina), ABC Central West NSW (Orange), ABC Coffs Coast (Coffs Harbour), ABC Illawarra (Wollongong), ABC New England North West (Tamworth), ABC North Coast NSW (Lismore), ABC Riverina (Wagga Wagga), ABC South East NSW (Bega), ABC Upper Hunter (Muswellbrook), ABC Western Plains NSW (Dubbo), Radio National (Sydney), Radio National (Newcastle) COPYRIGHT This report and its contents are for the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only and must not be provided to any third party by any means for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia and/or the relevant copyright owner. For more information contact copyright@isentia.com DISCLAIMER Isentia makes no representations and, to the extent permitted by law, excludes all warranties in relation to the information contained in the report and is not liable for any losses, costs or expenses, resulting from any use or misuse of the report.

2 Kelly is joined by ABC business reporter Michael Janda. Janda and Kelly discuss the... Radio National, Canberra, Breakfast (Early), Fran Kelly Duration: 8 mins 44 secs ASR AUD 378,975 National Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X Nov :51 AM Kelly is joined by ABC business reporter Michael Janda. Janda and Kelly discuss the five-year reappointment of APRA Chairman Wayne Byres in the wake of criticisms following the Kenneth Hayne Banking Royal Commission. Janda clarifies that much of the risky lending behaviour that APRA was criticised for in Hayne's report actually occurred under Byres' predecessor, John Laker. Janda adds that Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has stated that Byres is the best person for the job to implement the recommendations from the royal commission. Janda says that when Byres assumed the position of chairman in 2014, one of the first things he did was to undertake a review of the major banks' lending standards and implement better serviceability testing in an attempt to curb the risky lending. Janda notes the final royal commission report will come out on 1 February and he expects it will recommend APRA to beef up its enforcement activities. Janda believes significant cultural change will also be required so that APRA sees itself as a law enforcement agency and not just as a financial stability overseer. Janda then discusses The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work and its submission suggesting reform areas for APRA. Janda says Centre for Future Work Director Dr Jim Stanford and the ACTU are calling for an industry-wide bargaining approach in order to eliminate the bonuses and incentives that make up the bad behaviour in the sector, however, Janda adds there has been unanimous opposition from the big business groups. Janda says Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has voiced out his opposition by saying industry-wide bargaining would disadvantage struggling businesses which would have their wage levels set by the stronger firms within an industry. Janda then notes big business news for this week, with Westpac to announce its profit results today. Janda also notes the CBA AGM on Wednesday, which will be the first for Matt Comyn as CEO. Janda also mentions the BHP AGM which is on Thursday. Janda says it's expected the Reserve Bank will keep its rates on hold on Melbourne Cup day, while the US Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates in December. Janda also notes that the quarterly statement on monetary policy looking into 2019 and beyond will be out on Friday. Finally, Janda gives updates on the stock market. 140,000 All, 68,000 MALE 16+, 72,000 FEMALE 16+ Interviewees Dr Jim Stanford, director, The Australia Institute Centre for Future Work [excerpt] Josh Frydenberg, Federal Treasurer [excerpt] Michael Janda, business reporter, ABC Mentions ASIC Bank for International Settlements Banking Code of Conduct Australia superannuation system The Australian Also broadcast from the following 8 stations Radio National (Sydney), Radio National (Melbourne), Radio National (Brisbane), Radio National (Perth), Radio National (Hobart), Radio National (Adelaide), Radio National (Darwin), Radio National (Newcastle) Program Preview... Radio National, Canberra, Breakfast (Early), Fran Kelly 05 Nov :35 AM Duration: 0 min 38 secs ASR AUD 27,481 National Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X Program Preview - Discussion on Wayne Byres being appointed as the chairman of APRA in the wake of criticisms following the Banking Royal Commission. 140,000 All, 68,000 MALE 16+, 72,000 FEMALE 16+ Also broadcast from the following 8 stations Radio National (Sydney), Radio National (Melbourne), Radio National (Brisbane), Radio National (Perth), Radio National (Hobart), Radio National (Adelaide), Radio National (Darwin), Radio National (Newcastle) COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

3 Live cross to ABC reporter Alex Beech at Parliament House. Wayne Byers has been... ABC News, Sydney, News Breakfast, Michael Rowland, Virginia Trioli, Del Irani and Paul Kennedy 05 Nov :09 AM Duration: 1 min 32 secs ASR AUD 7,624 National Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X Live cross to ABC reporter Alex Beech at Parliament House. Wayne Byers has been reappointed as the chair of APRA despite criticism of the organisation during the Banking Royal Commission. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the decision will provide stability and continuity of leadership while extra funding will allow the agency to build expertise in areas like cybersecurity and financial technology. Meanwhile, Labor has been pushing for a say in statutory appointments. 76,000 All, 42,000 MALE 16+, 32,000 FEMALE 16+ Also broadcast from the following 22 stations ABC (Hobart), ABC (Darwin), ABC (Sydney), ABC (Brisbane), ABC (Adelaide), ABC (Melbourne), ABC (Perth), ABC (Canberra), ABC (Regional Queensland), ABC (Regional Victoria), ABC (Regional NSW), ABC (Albany), ABC News (Melbourne), ABC News (Regional NSW), ABC News (Brisbane), ABC News (Adelaide), ABC News (Perth), ABC News (Regional Queensland), ABC News (Hobart), ABC News (Canberra), ABC News (Regional Victoria), ABC News (Regional West Australia) The Federal Government has announced a $58m funding boost for APRA and... ABC News, Sydney, News Breakfast, Michael Rowland, Virginia Trioli, Del Irani and Paul Kennedy 05 Nov :05 AM Duration: 0 min 24 secs ASR AUD 1,987 National Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X The Federal Government has announced a $58m funding boost for APRA and reappointed Wayne Byres as chair despite criticism of the organisation during the Banking Royal Commission. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says Byers deserves to continue in the role. 76,000 All, 42,000 MALE 16+, 32,000 FEMALE 16+ Vision APRA, Committee for the Economic Development of Australia Also broadcast from the following 22 stations ABC (Hobart), ABC (Darwin), ABC (Sydney), ABC (Brisbane), ABC (Adelaide), ABC (Melbourne), ABC (Perth), ABC (Canberra), ABC (Regional Queensland), ABC (Regional Victoria), ABC (Regional NSW), ABC (Albany), ABC News (Melbourne), ABC News (Regional NSW), ABC News (Brisbane), ABC News (Adelaide), ABC News (Perth), ABC News (Regional Queensland), ABC News (Hobart), ABC News (Canberra), ABC News (Regional Victoria), ABC News (Regional West Australia) APRA will retain its chairman despite criticism from the Financial Services Royal... Smooth FM 95.3, Sydney, 06:00 News, Newsreader 05 Nov :00 AM Duration: 0 min 28 secs ASR AUD 378 NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Radio & TV ID: X APRA will retain its chairman despite criticism from the Financial Services Royal Commission. The Federal Government has reappointed Wayne Byres and will provide an additional $58m to help the organisation detect and prosecute misconduct. Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has defended the chairman. 30,000 All, 12,000 MALE 16+, 16,000 FEMALE 16+ Interviewees Josh Frydenberg, Federal Treasurer COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

4 Housing sector's decline a serious threat to economy The Australian, Australia, Business News, Ben Wilmot 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 7,358 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 530 word(s), ~2 mins 94,448 CIRCULATION ISPT campus project rides education wave The Australian, Australia, Business News, Ben Wilmot 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 4,528 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 392 word(s), ~1 min 94,448 CIRCULATION FIRE PROBE CHIEF: UFU CRISIS HURTS STATE Herald Sun, Melbourne, General News, Stephen Drill 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 22,710 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² VIC Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 548 word(s), ~2 mins 303,140 CIRCULATION Treasurer injects $60m into bank watchdog The Australian, Australia, General News, Michael Roddan 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 7,358 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 548 word(s), ~2 mins 94,448 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

5 Super investors abandoning the for-profit sector The Australian, Australia, General News, Anthony Klan 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 4,425 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 455 word(s), ~1 min 94,448 CIRCULATION Reasons behind ineffectual regulators The Australian, Australia, Business News, Adam Creighton 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 10,239 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 994 word(s), ~3 mins 94,448 CIRCULATION Why we're a global wonder Adelaide Advertiser, Adelaide, Business News, David Libby Koch 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 11,276 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² SA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 847 word(s), ~3 mins 112,097 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Adelaide Advertiser, Adelaide, Business News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 3,823 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² SA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 434 word(s), ~1 min 112,097 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

6 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Business News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 11,246 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 434 word(s), ~1 min 232,067 CIRCULATION Why we're a global wonder Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Business News, David Libby Koch 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 35,392 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 847 word(s), ~3 mins 232,067 CIRCULATION Tough half-year to hit Westpac profit The Australian, Australia, Business News, Ben Butler 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 6,998 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 491 word(s), ~1 min 94,448 CIRCULATION THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN The Australian, Australia, Business News, John Brumby 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 20,839 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 852 word(s), ~3 mins 94,448 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

7 Why we're a global wonder Courier Mail, Brisbane, Business News, David Libby Koch 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 13,418 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 847 word(s), ~3 mins 135,007 CIRCULATION Our oldies have, actually, never had it so good Age, Melbourne, Business News, Ross Gittins 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 20,308 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² VIC Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 815 word(s), ~3 mins 83,229 CIRCULATION Is corporate Australia approaching an investor-driven climate change "tipping point"? Age, Melbourne, Business News, Ruth Williams 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 50,909 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² VIC Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 1493 word(s), ~5 mins 83,229 CIRCULATION CBA, Westpac profits to show soft drop Age, Melbourne, Business News, Clancy Yeates 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 15,329 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² VIC Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 514 word(s), ~2 mins 83,229 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

8 CBA, Westpac profits to show soft drop Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Business News, Clancy Yeates 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 19,718 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 514 word(s), ~2 mins 88,634 CIRCULATION Is corporate Australia approaching an investor-driven climate change "tipping point"? Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Business News, Ruth Williams 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 66,648 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 1498 word(s), ~5 mins 88,634 CIRCULATION Our oldies have, actually, never had it so good Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Business News, Ross Gittins 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 25,539 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² NSW Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 815 word(s), ~3 mins 88,634 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Hobart Mercury, Hobart, Business News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 1,713 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² TAS Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 434 word(s), ~1 min 28,265 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

9 Is corporate Australia approaching an investor-driven climate change "tipping point"? Canberra Times, Canberra, Business News, Ruth Williams 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 24,333 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² ACT Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 1499 word(s), ~5 mins 17,579 CIRCULATION Our oldies have, actually, never had it so good Canberra Times, Canberra, Business News, Ross Gittins 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 9,503 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² ACT Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 815 word(s), ~3 mins 17,579 CIRCULATION Why franking credit refunds must go Australian Financial Review, Australia, General News, Chris Bowen 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 6,877 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 914 word(s), ~3 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION We can do better on taxation policy Australian Financial Review, Australia, Letters 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 1,881 Photo: No Type: Letter Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 142 word(s), <1 min 44,635 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

10 We can do better on taxation policy Australian Financial Review, Australia, Letters 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 1,881 Photo: No Type: Letter Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 142 word(s), <1 min 44,635 CIRCULATION Westpac didn't break lending laws: Gleeson Australian Financial Review, Australia, General News, Misa Han 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 8,070 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 697 word(s), ~2 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION AMP's main issue is lack of trust Murray Australian Financial Review, Australia, Companies and Markets, Sally Patten 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 8,697 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 649 word(s), ~2 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION Financial planners set against reform Australian Financial Review, Australia, General News, Adele Ferguson 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 12,399 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 1283 word(s), ~5 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

11 ISPT aspires higher with $400m uni tower Australian Financial Review, Australia, Property, Nick Lenaghan 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 4,551 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 435 word(s), ~1 min 44,635 CIRCULATION Investors put heat on ASX over AMP Australian Financial Review, Australia, General News, James Frost 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 8,556 Photo: Yes Type: Share Market Report Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 879 word(s), ~3 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Daily Mercury, Mackay QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 458 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 462 word(s), ~1 min 7,207 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side News Mail, Bundaberg QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 223 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 434 word(s), ~1 min 6,176 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

12 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Queensland Times, Ipswich QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 222 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 435 word(s), ~1 min 6,256 CIRCULATION State paying for fire fight Geelong Advertiser, Geelong VIC, General News, Stephen Drill 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 897 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² VIC Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 504 word(s), ~2 mins 16,687 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Gladstone Observer, Gladstone QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 223 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 434 word(s), ~1 min 3,301 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Cairns Post, Cairns, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 1,289 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 439 word(s), ~1 min 13,896 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

13 Leppard love still bites West Australian, Perth, Today 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 10,274 Photo: Yes Type: Review Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 562 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 273 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 435 word(s), ~1 min 9,376 CIRCULATION When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Sunshine Coast Daily, Maroochydore QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 345 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 476 word(s), ~1 min 10,046 CIRCULATION Why we're a global wonder Sunshine Coast Daily, Maroochydore QLD, General News 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 948 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 849 word(s), ~3 mins 10,046 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

14 Resolve handover of super powers West Australian, Perth, Your Money 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 13,096 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 680 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION FPA ain't dreaming if it turfs out the big boys West Australian, Perth, Your Money, Neale Prior 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 6,206 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 532 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION Guesswork for retirees in Bill's firing line West Australian, Perth, Your Money, Neale Prior 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 25,666 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: 1, cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 633 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION ALP plan about as sexy as fire hydrant possie West Australian, Perth, Your Money, Neale Prior 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 4,926 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 496 word(s), ~1 min 147,676 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

15 Blow bucks to beat Bill's Bill West Australian, Perth, Your Money, Neale Prior 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 8,731 Photo: Yes Type: Share Market Report Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 609 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION APRA's Byres gets another five years Australian Financial Review, Australia, General News, Phillip Coorey 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 6,088 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 644 word(s), ~2 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION Best man to head up bank regulator Australian Financial Review, Australia, General News, John Kehoe 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 7,686 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² National Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 516 word(s), ~2 mins 44,635 CIRCULATION Why we're a global wonder Townsville Bulletin, Townsville QLD, General News, David Libby Koch 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 4,527 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 847 word(s), ~3 mins 16,484 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT For the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only. Not to be provided to any third party for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia. For further information contact copyright@isentia.com

16 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side Townsville Bulletin, Townsville QLD, General News, Anthony Keane 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 1,651 Photo: No Type: News Item Size: cm² QLD Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 474 word(s), ~1 min 16,484 CIRCULATION FINANCIAL FAST FACTS West Australian, Perth, Your Money 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 15,638 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 615 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION Super time beyond caps West Australian, Perth, Your Money, Tracey Scotchbrook 05 Nov 2018 Page words ASR AUD 9,327 Photo: Yes Type: News Item Size: cm² WA Australia Industry Super Australia - Press ID: View original - Full text: 600 word(s), ~2 mins 147,676 CIRCULATION COPYRIGHT This report and its contents are for the internal research use of Mediaportal subscribers only and must not be provided to any third party by any means for any purpose without the express permission of Isentia and/or the relevant copyright owner. For more information contact copyright@isentia.com DISCLAIMER Isentia makes no representations and, to the extent permitted by law, excludes all warranties in relation to the information contained in the report and is not liable for any losses, costs or expenses, resulting from any use or misuse of the report.

17 The Australian, Australia Author: Ben Wilmot Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 21 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 7,358 Words: 530 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Housing sector s decline a serious threat to economy BEN WILMOT Tightening credit to the housing sector is driving a pull in the residential property market that threatens to spill over into the broader economy, funds managers and strategists have warned. The housing market s downward trajectory has been confirmed with yet another poor week of auction results, crashing to a six-year low, with concerns about the slowing sector hitting both Stockland and Mirvac, and also threatening to impinge upon retail spending. Auction clearance rates are tracking at below 50 per cent and auction volumes have slumped, with research house CoreLogic reporting a preliminary auction clearance rate of 47.4 per cent across the 1529 auctions last week. While this edged up on the previous week s final clearance rate of 47 per cent, volumes dipped in Melbourne as the Spring Racing Carnival kicks into gear and CoreLogic warned the final clearance rate would likely come in lower than last week as more results were collected. The slowing market is tipping over into the real economy with Morgan Stanley s equity strategists warning that household deleveraging was likely to restrain spending growth into The bank said sentiment had deteriorated significantly in October, with auction clearance rates plunging in Sydney and Melbourne, and surveyed house price expectations at record lows. Weaker prices and tight credit are hitting building approvals, with September showing declining trends for both apartments and houses, although activity should stay robust as projects are completed, the bank said. Looking ahead, the bank s housing model suggests both prices and approvals are likely to drop on the of the subdued outlook for credit demand and supply, as well as the still-elevated level of prices and an ongoing overbuild. We see the decline in house prices as a key catalyst for a deleveraging cycle, which we see as a meaningful headwind for bank revenues/earnings and consumer spending ahead, albeit not recessionary while global growth and public spending remain supportive, bank equity strategists said. Resolution Capital managing director Andrew Parsons said residential price declines were notable in Sydney and more recently Melbourne. The pull- appears to be the result of a number of factors, including increasing building supply together with reduced demand from offshore buyers, most notably the Chinese, he said. But he called out Australian Prudential Regulation Authority restrictions on investor loan growth and interest-only lending and the banking royal commission, as more significant. Mr Parsons warned clouds were forming for future years due to falling residential prices and volumes for major developers Mirvac and Stockland. Labor s proposed changes to negative gearing and the halving of capital gains tax discounts for residential investors was likely to be on balance negative for stocks with residential development activity, such as Mirvac and Stockland, he said. The build-to-rent industry also faced hurdles due to the existing negative gearing tax regime and, to a lesser extent, capital gains tax concessions. It is simply more economic for developers to sell to individuals and self-managed super funds than to institutional investors, he said. The new products had a lot to do with long-term positioning and the slowdown in the residential market. It is better to generate a low cash return than sit on excess land sites, he said.

18 The Australian, Australia Author: Ben Wilmot Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 21 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,528 Words: 392 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 ISPT campus project rides education wave Superannuation fund-ed property house ISPT has won a tender to develop a 32-storey vertical campus in the heart of Melbourne as property companies tap the booming higher education sector. Developers are moving into the sector as universities seek new premises to draw students to major centres and potentially capture new tenants that can benefit from being close to technology precincts. Last month Charter Hall unveiled a deal with two Sydney universities that will see a $280 million engineering innovation hub developed in Parramatta. Last year, a Lendlease consortium was also tapped to redevelop the former site of the Royal Women s Hospital in Melbourne s Carlton, into an innovation precinct. The new ISPT tower will have a similar flavour as it will partner with Victoria University and the Victorian Department of Education and Training to develop the property that will be leased to VU under a 30- year agreement. After a tender run by Flagstaff Partners, ISPT will acquire three separate properties from VU: the Former Records Office at Queen Street; the Victoria University Tower at Little Lonsdale Street; and Queen Street, which is the Land Titles Office. The new 24,000sq m vertical campus will be developed on the Little Lonsdale Street site, with office and teaching space. Approval is already in place for a striking vertical campus building designed by Daryl Jackson Architects. Building is expected to start next year with completion scheduled for The Queen Street and Queen Street properties are heritage-listed and will be retained. Victoria University vicechancellor professor Peter Dawkins said the partnership with ISPT would help create a world-class precinct in the CBD, while also setting up an infrastructure fund to opportunities in its campuses across Melbourne s west. ISPT chief executive Daryl Browning said the company would create an architectural statement befitting the prominence of the site. Education is a major services export contributor, critical to the economy over the medium to long term, and this project will diversify our exposure and that of our Investors to this important sector, he said. The Victoria University Precinct will be the fourth development that ISPT has underway in Melbourne. It has projects including 271 Spring Street, Australian Unity s new headquarters, 447 Collins Street, in a joint venture with Cbus Property, and 405 Bourke Street, leased to NAB and being developed with Brookfield. BEN WILMOT

19 Herald Sun, Melbourne Author: Stephen Drill Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 303,140 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 22,710 Words: 548 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 FIRE PROBE CHIEF: UFU CRISIS HURTS STATE EXCLUSIVE STEPHEN DRILL THE former judge who led the Black Saturday bushfires royal commission says Victoria is suffering from Premier Daniel Andrews s bid to keep peace with the United Firefighters Union. As Victoria heads towards an election and a potentially disastrous bushfire season, Bernard Teague said the UFU s continuing push to increase control of the state s fire services was not in the best interests of the public. In his first major public comments since the royal commission delivered its report on the 2009 fires, the former Supreme Court judge told the Herald Sun: (The UFU s) only negotiating position is Let us take over. And that can t work. (UFU boss) Peter Marshall is so obviously intent on doing what s best for his members, but in a way that effectively from my perspective just means that the interests of the community suffer, he said. CONTINUED PAGE 2 FIRE PROBE BOSS: UFU CRISIS HURTS STATE FROM PAGE 1 Mr Teague said: Daniel Andrews has had to pay and will continue to pay for the position that is taken by the UFU but it comes at a cost to the community. I don t know how you deal with it, when you have got a situation with Peter Marshall that is effectively not negotiable. It s hard to see anything other than problems arising on these kinds of Black Saturday days. Victoria is heading into what could be one of the worst fire seasons since Black Saturday: authorities warn dry conditions have created huge fuel loads. Mr Teague, who was appointed by then Labor premier John Brumby to chair the inquiry into the Black Saturday fires, raised concerns about the dispute over the state s fire services, which has dominated state politics since Mr Andrews ed a controversial workplace agreement for paid CFA firefighters, despite fears it would hand the UFU broad veto powers over management decisions. Then emergency services minister Jane Garrett resigned after she refused to sign the deal, and the CFA s chief executive, chief fire officer and its entire board were forced out. Workplace agreements for the CFA and MFB remain unsigned. Mr Teague, who joined the CFA after the inquiry, said: Sadly there has been a succession of people who have gone who were good people in my estimation, and I m fascinated that Peter Marshall remains. Mr Andrews said yesterday that if re-elected, he was committed to restructuring fire services,

20 Herald Sun, Melbourne Author: Stephen Drill Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 303,140 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 22,710 Words: 548 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 putting all paid firefighters in a new agency and leaving only volunteers in the CFA. Mr Teague said: When it comes to electioneering, to have the Marshall horses on-side is an enormous plus, to have them off-side is an enormous disadvantage, and I think that is why he (Daniel Andrews) has tried to keep the peace. I think Jane Garrett said No, what you are doing is overstepping the mark, and so she had to go. Mr Teague said the biggest achievement of the inquiry, which made 67 recommendations, had been changes to warning systems. A stay or go policy was ditched for one to leave early and live. Power line upgrades were costly and difficult, but he understood planning law changes had made building new dwellings more difficult in fire-prone areas. A recommended 5 per cent controlled burning target was revised to focus on high-risk areas. stephen.drill@news.com.au EDITORIAL PAGE 24 PETER MARSHALL

21 Herald Sun, Melbourne Author: Stephen Drill Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 303,140 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 22,710 Words: 548 Item ID: Page 3 of 3 BERNARD TEAGUE

22 The Australian, Australia Author: Michael Roddan Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 2 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 7,358 Words: 548 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Treasurer injects $60m into bank watchdog MICHAEL RODDAN Josh Frydenberg will beef up the banking regulator with $60 million in new funding after the royal commission slammed the watchdog for failing to enforce the law, while reappointing its chairman, Wayne Byres, for another five years. The extended term for Mr Byres, who has led the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority since mid-2014, comes despite banking royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne lashing the watchdog for never taking a bank, superannuation fund or insurance company to court. The government has decided to opt for stability at the upper echelons of the prudential regulator as Australia s financial system prepares for a period of significant reform, rewarding Mr Byres attempts to cool the housing market over the past four years. In addition to pursuing a broad agenda to build resilience across the industries it supervises, APRA has been undertaking careful and targeted interventions in the housing market and implementing the new Banking Executive Accountability Regime, the Treasurer said. APRA has attempted to get banks to stop writing riskier loans, sold to borrowers who may not be able to repay them when interest rates rise. The royal commission has zeroed in on systemic problems with banks failure to properly assess borrower income and expenses. In his interim report, released in September, Mr Hayne slammed APRA and sister agency the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for rarely taking wrongdoers to court never in APRA s case and asked if the regulators needed to fortify enforcement in light of the misconduct revealed in his hearings. APRA said it would need more funding and legal changes to adopt a more aggressive approach. Over four years, APRA will have an extra $58.7m to spend on more supervisors to monitor large and complex financial companies, boost its ability to respond to emerging issues such as cyber threats and the growth in fintech firms, fund improved data collection and pay for a thorough review of its enforcement failures. Despite ASIC s funding being boosted by $70m recently, its chair, James Shipton, last month called on the government to properly fund financial regulators, noting Hong Kong s regulators were three times better funded than their Australian counterparts. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has also asked for more funding to handle legal cases stemming from the royal commission. Former Treasury mandarin John Lonsdale, recently named APRA deputy chair, has been tasked with finding out why the regulator never went to court. During the royal commission, it was revealed APRA chose not to take any action against Commonwealth Bank s super division Colonial First State despite being aware of at least 13,000 criminal breaches when it failed to move super savers from high-fee funds to low-fee MySuper products. The news will likely rankle Labor, which has been calling to be consulted on statutory appointments in the lead-up to the next federal election. In seeking a veto over government appointments, Bill Shorten is acting as if he has won the next election, Mr Frydenberg told The Australian. It seems Labor has forgotten it is in opposition. The reappointment comes as a former senior adviser to previous financial services minister Kelly O Dwyer joins APRA as a senior manager of policy development in the superannuation division. Eve Brown, who was an executive manager of Suncorp s superannuation business, started at APRA this month, according to LinkedIn.

23 The Australian, Australia Author: Anthony Klan Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 2 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,425 Words: 455 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Super investors abandoning the for-profit sector EXCLUSIVE ANTHONY KLAN The nation s superannuation savers are continuing to abandon funds managed by major financial institutions in favour of the not-for-profit sector. Funds flowing to AustralianSuper are almost 90 per cent higher than at the same time last year and funds flowing to Cbus from AMP have increased three-fold. AustralianSuper, a not-forprofit and the nation s biggest super fund, holding more than $140 billion in retirement savings, said it had seen inflows of $4.65bn in the four months since July 1, up 87 per cent on the same period last year. And the rate of growth was still gathering pace. Since the start of the royal commission (into banks), there has been a sharp rise in member contributions, said Rose Kerlin, AustralianSuper s group executive for membership. The inflows from members into AustralianSuper for every month this financial year have been 87 per cent higher than the same time the previous year. Ms Kerlin said the biggest increase had been from people aged between 50 and 65. Retail, or for-profit, super funds run by major banks and financial institutions have long substantially underperformed not-for-profit or industry funds because they charge substantially higher fees, both disclosed and hidden. The royal commission into banks has found retail super fund trustees have often put the profits of banks ahead of super members despite them being legally obligated to put members interests first at all times and it has emerged the big four banks, AMP and IOOF have gouged hundreds of millions of dollars a year by paying super members interest rates on simple cash investments that are a fraction of actual market rates. A Productivity Commission study published late last month found returns paid by retail funds were, every year on average, 40 per cent lower than returns for industry funds and that 89 of 92 identified highfee funds were all retail funds. Financial services company AMP has been found to have been one of the worst offenders. David Atkin, chief executive of major industry super fund Cbus, told The Australian that last month the amount of money flowing to Cbus from AMP was three times the amount at the same time last year. The pace of rollovers from banks and large retail funds is continuing to increase, Mr Atkin said. Over the last six months Cbus has seen growth of over 153 per cent in people switching from the banks and retail funds compared to the same period last year. People are taking an increasingly sceptical eye towards retail super. David Elia, chief executive of Hostplus, another of the biggest not-for-profit funds, said the money being invested in the company from other funds had more than doubled up 130 per cent for the year to September 30.

24 The Australian, Australia Author: Adam Creighton Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 17 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 10,239 Words: 994 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Reasons behind ineffectual regulators ADAM CREIGHTON ECONOMICS EDITOR The heads of the banking and corporate regulators, reportedly due to appear at the royal commission into financial services later this month, will inevitably have to bat away questions from QCs that cast them as lazy or timid. They haven t had the best year. The interim report of the commission was scathing about ASIC in particular, noting that over the decade to June this year, it sent infringement notices to the major banks totalling less than $1.3 million a piddling sum for a gargantuan industry. It banned fewer than 130 financial advisers out of 25,000 in business. Certainly, it seems they didn t act forcefully enough to stop a barrage of misconduct that has stopped the nation. But blame lies with government at least as much as with ASIC. Government sets the penalties, it sets the funding and the wider legal framework in which both regulators operated. It fell short on all three measures, so poorly that a cynic might wonder whether the finance sector had undue influence in Canberra. For a start, former treasurer Joe Hockey s first budget slashed ASIC s budget by 20 per cent, which came on top of a series of efficiency dividends carried over from Labor s Wayne Swan in his time as treasurer. More than 200 staff were laid off over three years. The cut was reversed after Continued on Page 23 Responsibility for nation s ineffectual financial regulators runs deep Continued from Page 17 Labor started pushing for a royal commission in 2016, which the government ultimately set up through gritted teeth late last year. It s remarkable that a body charged with regulating financial services should shrink as that sector s share of the economy crept up towards a record at about 9 per cent more than any other sector. For an industry that s meant to be an intermediary, that s impressive. As for penalties, in early 2014 ASIC publicly called to toughen them, noting they were a fraction of those overseas. The Murray inquiry of the same year agreed with ASIC, but only this year has the Coalition moved to stiffen white-collar penalties. Other recommendations including to give ASIC a competit- ion mandate, and power to quash dodgy financial products, were not taken up either. Indeed, whistleblowing protections are risible by global standards, making it risky and potentially very costly for whitecollar professionals to dob in their colleagues for malfeasance. The biggest problem has been intellectual. The fundamental law governing financial regulation, the 2001 Financial Reform Act, assumed the honesty and integrity among finance sector workers. For instance, it requires financial service licencees to notify ASIC of any significant breach of their obligations under the law as soon as practicable, and within 10 days of becoming aware of a breach. What would people think of a clause in criminal law requiring thieves to self-report? Far from being timely, in Senate testimony in June, it emerged that it s taken four years on average for breaches to be identified internally, based on evidence from 12 banks. Then it took another two months to report to the regulator, followed by another seven months for any recompense to reach customers. Of course, this relates only to those breaches that were actually identified and reported. ASIC had lobbied the government to reform the system of awarding financial licences, to make them a privilege, as in other countries, rather than a right. Here, even those with criminal records can get one. The legal system hasn t helped either, and economic incentives have made ASIC reluctant to take action. For a start, cases are heard in state courts, without juries. Often there is a culture problem with judges, where they do not perceive white-collar crime at the same level as blue-collar and sen-

25 The Australian, Australia Author: Adam Creighton Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 17 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 10,239 Words: 994 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 tencing is often much lighter, particular in state courts, said a wellplaced source. One innovation might be to allow civil cases to be heard by jury rather than a judge as is currently the case something banks and judiciary would hate, but decisions would be more likely to reflect the community s view of financial services social licence. And then, because legal costs are imposed on the losing party in civil cases, taking a case against major banks has been highly risky. They have deeper pockets and can outspend on legal services. The recent shift to an industry funding model, where the finance sector in effect funds ASIC, has neutralised this legal costs are counted as part of the levy. Nevertheless, ASIC under Greg Medcraft, who was chairman from 2012 to 2017, won a case against Westpac for attempting to manipulate wholesale interest rates. It was the first time a major bank had been convicted of rate rigging in the developed world. The other major banks settled out of court. Ultimately, the spate of misconduct in the sector stems from a lack of competition, which allows businesses to get away with overcharging and arrogance. To be sure, it arises in part because consumers are not well placed to understand financial products, or how they are priced. And yet the assumption underpinning financial services regulation remains that customers are highly rational and equipped to sift through products to find what s best for them, That s looking increasingly misguided, not just here, but globally where large financial institutions have similarly been found to have erred on the side of systematic gouging and misconduct. Governments, of either political persuasion, don t appear to want tough regulators. It s still far from clear they do. The vast revenues of large financial institutions, which underpin exorbitant bonuses and ridiculous corporate excess, are built mainly on charging significantly more than is necessary. At the same time, governments have permitted the growth of ever larger and more powerful financial institutions, blessing mergers and takeovers, and increased the sector s market power further. Perhaps digital technology will put more power in consumer hands. Waiting for governments to create effective regulators appears unlikely, and will always be an inferior outcome to genuine competition in any case.

26 Adelaide Advertiser, Adelaide Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 112,097 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: SA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 11,276 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 Q David & Libby Why we re a global wonder High praise for the Australian economy shows negative sentiment unjustified THIS is the most hated period of economic prosperity in Australian history. It has become un-australian to acknowledge anything we do well and it infuriates us. We have previously written about our personal Campaign For Optimism to try and break this destructive negativity. It s not good for the economy, for business or for the average Australian when the reality is quite positive. So we welcome to our campaign the world s most prestigious economics and finance magazine, The Economist. Based in London, this is the magazine read by the world s most powerful politicians, bankers and business chiefs. Last week s cover story of The Economist was Aussie Rules what Australia can teach the world. Inside the magazine is a 12- page report on Australia, which it dubs the wonder down under. It s a clinical, objective outsider s expert assessment of how we are going as a nation the conclusion is we re going pretty bloody well. The only people who don t realise it is us. Its economy is arguably the most successful in the rich world, states the magazine s editorial. It has been growing for 27 years without a recession a record for a developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period is almost three times what Germany has managed. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41 per cent of GDP, is less that half Britain s. Its assessment is vastly different to the common scaremongering from conservative politicians and media. Our Government debt is way below even Germany (64 per cent of its GDP), Canada (90 per cent and it s a similarsized economy as ours) or Japan (an incredible 238 per cent). VISIONARY CALLS So, how did we get to this enviable position? The Economist puts it down to a couple of landmark decisions, some of which were made 30 years ago, including: Paul Keating and Bob Hawke floating the Australian dollar, abolishing import quotas, slashing tariffs, overhauling the tax code and shifting a centralised wage accord to enterprise bargaining. Keating introducing compulsory super. Medicare. John Howard s macro-economic management to deliver budget surpluses in eight out of 11 years. Kevin Rudd s fiscal stimulus to fight the Global Financial Crisis, including his $900 handouts. All of these changes received a huge amount of criticism, but these political architects who cover both sides of politics had the vision to do what was right for the country rather than their own popularity. The Economist claims these decisions have been what has made this country great and resulted in the current period of prosperity. They are also in awe of our immigration policy, and our acceptance of it, which allows three times as many newcomers, relative to population, as America. Over 28 per cent of our population was born overseas and half were either born abroad or are the child of someone who was. The immigrants are also young, which gives Australia a median age well below that of most European countries.

27 Adelaide Advertiser, Adelaide Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 112,097 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: SA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 11,276 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 IN A GREAT SPOT Our geographic location has also been working in our favour. Being on the edge of the region which is fast becoming the new economic engine of the globe has been an enormous boost for our trade. It s not just the traditional mining and agriculture sectors which have benefited from trade with Asia. It has also allowed us to diversify our economy to a point where tourism is our third biggest export, while education is in the top five. Plus our services sector is riding the burgeoning development of a middle class across Asia which not only wants luxury brand material goods, but also access to first world medical, education and aged care. Going forward, our crucial ties to Asia will provide a tricky political environment as we try and stay friends with both our biggest trading partner as well as our oldest ally while they re feuding with each other. decisive thinking that our leaders used in the past. But they warn Australian voters are becoming disenchanted with the effectiveness of Government. This is forcing politicians to become increasingly febrile in order to gain popularity, rather than do what s right for the country. In other words, we re killing the golden goose because we re losing the sense of what makes us great: vision and decisiveness. We love the conclusion, and the implied challenge, from The Economist: Ambitious reforms have become rare. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Australia and Australians could do with a refresher course. WE CAN IMPROVE We all know that while we live in a remarkable country, we can do better in a whole lot of areas. The Economist highlights our failure to solve the enormous disadvantages suffered by Aborigines; how we suffer ongoing droughts but do so little to fight climate change; questions why we allowed superannuation fee rip-offs for so long; and can t understand our treatment of illegal immigrants. The magazine calls for today s politicians to come up with solutions to these problems using the same

28 Adelaide Advertiser, Adelaide Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 112,097 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: SA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 11,276 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 3 of 3

29 Adelaide Advertiser, Adelaide Author: Anthony Keane Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 112,097 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: SA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 3,823 Words: 434 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction wou result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

30 Daily Telegraph, Sydney Author: Anthony Keane Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 232,067 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 11,246 Words: 434 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result ltin i massive i underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds ave a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

31 Daily Telegraph, Sydney Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 232,067 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 35,392 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 David & Libby Why we re a global wonder High praise for the Australian economy shows negative sentiment unjustified THIS is the most hated period of economic prosperity in Australian history. It has become un-australian to acknowledge anything we do well and it infuriates us. We have previously written about our personal Campaign For Optimism to try and break this destructive negativity. It s not good for the economy, for business or for the average Australian when the reality is quite positive. So we welcome to our campaign the world s most prestigious economics and finance magazine, The Economist. Based in London, this is the magazine read by the world s most powerful politicians, bankers and business chiefs. Last week s cover story of The Economist was Aussie Rules what Australia can teach the world. Inside the magazine is a 12- page report on Australia, which it dubs the wonder down under. It s a clinical, objective outsider s expert assessment of how we are going as a nation the conclusion is we re going pretty bloody well. The only people who don t realise it is us. Its economy is arguably the most successful in the rich world, states the magazine s editorial. It has been growing for 27 years without a recession a record for a developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period is almost three times what Germany has managed. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41 per cent of GDP, is less that half Britain s. Its assessment is vastly different to the common scaremongering from conservative politicians and media. Our Government debt is way below even Germany (64 per cent of its GDP), Canada (90 per cent and it s a similarsized economy as ours) or Japan (an incredible 238 per cent). VISIONARY CALLS So, how did we get to this enviable position? The Economist puts it down to a couple of landmark decisions, some of which were made 30 years ago, including: Paul Keating and Bob Hawke floating the Australian dollar, abolishing import quotas, slashing tariffs, overhauling the tax code and shifting a centralised wage accord to enterprise bargaining. Keating introducing compulsory super. Medicare. John Howard s macro-economic management to deliver budget surpluses in eight out of 11 years. Kevin Rudd s fiscal stimulus to fight the Global Financial Crisis, including his $900 handouts. All of these changes received a huge amount of criticism, but these political architects who cover both sides of politics had the vision to do what was right for the country rather than their own popularity. The Economist claims these decisions have been what has made this country great and resulted in the current period of prosperity. They are also in awe of our immigration policy, and our acceptance of it, which allows three times as many newcomers, relative to population, as America. Over 28 per cent of our population was born overseas and half were either born abroad or are the child of someone who was. The immigrants are also young, which gives Australia a median age well below that of most European countries. IN A GREAT SPOT Our geographic location has also been working in our favour. Being on the edge of the region which is fast becoming the new economic engine of the globe has been an enormous boost for our trade. It s not just the traditional mining

32 Daily Telegraph, Sydney Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 232,067 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 35,392 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 and agriculture sectors which have benefited from trade with Asia. It has also allowed us to diversify our economy to a point where tourism is our third biggest export, while education is in the top five. Plus our services sector is riding the burgeoning development of a middle class across Asia which not only wants luxury brand material goods, but also access to first world medical, education and aged care. Going forward, our crucial ties to Asia will provide a tricky political environment as we try and stay friends with both our biggest trading partner as well as our oldest ally while they re feuding with each other. because we re losing the sense of what makes us great: vision and decisiveness. We love the conclusion, and the implied challenge, from The Economist: Ambitious reforms have become rare. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Australia and Australians could do with a refresher course. WE CAN IMPROVE We all know that while we live in a remarkable country, we can do better in a whole lot of areas. The Economist highlights our failure to solve the enormous disadvantages suffered by Aborigines; how we suffer ongoing droughts but do so little to fight climate change; questions why we allowed superannuation fee rip-offs for so long; and can t understand our treatment of illegal immigrants. The magazine calls for today s politicians to come up with solutions to these problems using the same decisive thinking that our leaders used in the past. But they warn Australian voters are becoming disenchanted with the effectiveness of Government. This is forcing politicians to become increasingly febrile in order to gain popularity, rather than do what s right for the country. In other words, we re killing the golden goose

33 Daily Telegraph, Sydney Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 232,067 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 35,392 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 3 of 3

34 The Australian, Australia Author: Ben Butler Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 20 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 6,998 Words: 491 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Tough half-year to hit Westpac profit BEN BUTLER Westpac is expected to announce a full-year result that is flat at best today after a difficult half-year due to falling house prices, rising bills for misconduct exposed at the banking royal commission and higher funding costs. Analysts expect the bank, the only of the big four that is not trying to offload its financial advice arm, will announce a cash profit of between $8bn and $8.1bn this morning about the same as last year s result. Westpac s results follow ANZ s revelation last week that its cash profit plunged 16 per cent, to $5.8bn, driven in part by losses in the wealth business, which the bank is in the process of selling to financial services group IOOF. Australia s biggest and most scandal-prone bank, CBA, is to announce its results on Wednesday. UBS analyst Jonathan Mott, who has slapped a sell recommendation on all big four banks, said this bank results season saw the financial behemoths taking their medicine. The risk of the current credit squeeze turning into a credit crunch is real and is rising, with the housing market now falling sharply, Mr Mott said. The banking sector is facing a period of substantial and sustained earnings pressure which is likely to last several years. He said Westpac s interest margins for the second half of the year were very soft, squeezed by factors including higher funding costs and customers switching to lower-cost options, while the benefit of jacking up mortgage rates was not likely to be seen until results for the first half of the 2019 financial year are reported. WBC s result will also be impacted by customer remediation for fee-for-no-service and inadequate advice from salaried planners and litigation, he said. While other banks are moving to get out of the risky financial advice sector by selling or de-merging their wealth divisions, Westpac has so far decided to retain BT Financial Group, which it bought in On Friday, Westpac increased its estimate of remediation for the second time in a little over a month, adding $46m to the $235m hit to cash profits it unveiled in September. Evidence at the royal commission revealed Australian Securities and Investments Commission staff regarded Westpac as having the worst attitude towards complying with the law, telling thenchairman Greg Medcraft in a 2015 memo that the bank suffered from poor culture and weak risk controls. Mr Mott said investors were also likely to focus on costs, which soared 5.4 per cent in the second half, and the performance of Westpac s loan book, which remained strong. However, attention will focus on mortgages 90-plus days delinquent, which are continuing to tick up, he said. While mortgage foreclosure should remain very low (only a few hundred across its entire mortgage book), we would expect this given the rapid house price inflation borrowers enjoyed until the end of Most delinquent mortgagors will elect to sell their house privately rather than suffer bank foreclosure at present. $ Aug $26.50 Westpac fell 17c Sep Oct Source: Bloomberg

35 The Australian, Australia Author: John Brumby Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 23 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 20,839 Words: 852 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN China trade Expo ticks all the boxes for our exporters JOHN BRUMBY This week, the world s biggest trade fair kicks off in Shanghai. This deserves far more attention than it has received in Australia. The China International Import Expo (CIIE) will involve more than 3600 companies from over 130 different countries, spruiking their wares to more than 150,000 buyers. It s an unparalleled opportunity for Australian businesses to pitch themselves to a market that is already the second largest in the world, and will soon be the largest. At a time when the IMF has revised down its global growth forecasts to 3.7 per cent for , businesses everywhere need to be turning their attention to where the growth is strong. With growth forecast to remain at 6.6 per cent for this year the place to be looking is China. To get an idea of the scale of opportunity in China, we need only look at Singles Day. On November 11 each year, people across China buy gifts for themselves and their single friends. It s a retailers and consumers paradise, a time of bargains and special deals. Most of the buying is done online. And the numbers are truly staggering. Last year, just one hour after Single s Day began, the online retail site Alibaba had made $10 billion worth of sales. After 13 hours, the previous record of $24bn had been smashed, and by the end of the day sales had reached $33bn. To put that in perspective, it s more than the entire annual economic output of Tasmania on one platform, in one day. The story of China in the coming years is the story of a rising middle class, and one that is prepared to spend. The World Economic Forum recently predicted that within 10 years China will have the largest middle class in the world 65 per cent of its people and that this will grow consumption by about 6 per cent per annum to reach more than $US8 trillion ($11 trillion) by the end of the decade. That s why the CIIE is so important to Australia. Our largest exports to China are still resources iron ore, copper and coal and while these will continue, as China shifts to consumption-led growth a raft of new opportunities are opening up. It s worth noting the diversity of Australian companies making their way to Shanghai for the CIIE: Blackmores and Swisse, Qantas, Treasury Wine Estates, a2 Milk, Tourism Australia and many, many more. These demonstrate what Australia can offer in terms of the experiential, high quality, clean and green products and services that a new generation of middle-class Chinese consumers demand. But the significance of CIIE goes well beyond five days in November. President Xi Jinping has made it one of his two signature platforms, along with China s massive infrastructure building program, the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). These are not arbitrary choices. Both BRI and CIIE are about creating pathways for trade in goods and services between China and the rest of the world. This is in marked contrast with what we are seeing in the US and parts of Europe, where there are moves to shut down international trade, erect tariff walls, and offer the false promise of prosperity through protectionism. China knows the value of trade, having grown its economy at an average annual rate of almost 10 per cent since their great opening up in And Australia knows it too, having enjoyed almost 28 years of unbroken economic growth with low inflation, thanks in large part to our trade with China. CIIE is also an opportunity for Australian businesses to make the kind of person-to-person contacts that are essential in a trading relationship that is shifting to services. Research commissioned by ACBC has shown that up to one million new Australian jobs could be created in the services sector in the next five years, all based on growth in the China market. But it won t happen automatically. Whether we re talking about health, education, legal or financial services, tourism or aged-care services, trade is relational, not just transactional. There is simply no substitute today for putting your feet on the ground and meeting potential partners face to face. That s what CIIE is all about. This year marks the 40th anniversary of China s opening up to the world. Last year marked the 45th anniversary of Australia s diplomatic engagement with China. That means Australia has accompanied China throughout their journey from poverty to prosperity. At a time when there is some tension in the Australia-China relationship, when significant global markets are turning their s on the benefits of trade, and when China s economic profile is changing, and personal contacts are more important than ever, the China International Import Expo ticks all the boxes. Australia should make the most of this opportunity.

36 The Australian, Australia Author: John Brumby Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 94,448 Page: 23 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 20,839 Words: 852 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 John Brumby is the national president of the Australia China Business Council and will be a special envoy of the state of Victoria at the China International Import Expo. The China International Import Expo in Shanghai will involve more than 3600 companies from over 130 different countries CHINATOPIX

37 Courier Mail, Brisbane Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 135,007 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 13,418 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 48 MONEYSAVERHQ David & Libby Why we re a global wonder High praise for the Australian economy shows negative sentiment unjustified THIS is the most hated period of economic prosperity in Australian history. It has become un-australian to acknowledge anything we do well and it infuriates us. We have previously written about our personal Campaign For Optimism to try and break this destructive negativity. It s not good for the economy, for business or for the average Australian when the reality is quite positive. So we welcome to our campaign the world s most prestigious economics and finance magazine, The Economist. Based in London, this is the magazine read by the world s most powerful politicians, bankers and business chiefs. Last week s cover story of The Economist was Aussie Rules what Australia can teach the world. Inside the magazine is a 12- page report on Australia, which it dubs the wonder down under. It s a clinical, objective outsider s expert assessment of how we are going as a nation the conclusion is we re going pretty bloody well. The only people who don t realise it is us. Its economy is arguably the most successful in the rich world, states the magazine s editorial. It has been growing for 27 years without a recession a record for a developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period is almost three times what Germany has managed. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41 per cent of GDP, is less that half Britain s. Its assessment is vastly different to the common scaremongering from conservative politicians and media. Our Government debt is way below even Germany (64 per cent of its GDP), Canada (90 per cent and it s a similarsized economy as ours) or Japan (an incredible 238 per cent). VISIONARY CALLS So, how did we get to this enviable position? The Economist puts it down to a couple of landmark decisions, some of which were made 30 years ago, including: Paul Keating and Bob Hawke floating the Australian dollar, abolishing import quotas, slashing tariffs, overhauling the tax code and shifting a centralised wage accord to enterprise bargaining. Keating introducing compulsory super. Medicare. John Howard s macro-economic management to deliver budget surpluses in eight out of 11 years. Kevin Rudd s fiscal stimulus to fight the Global Financial Crisis, including his $900 handouts. All of these changes received a huge amount of criticism, but these political architects who cover both sides of politics had the vision to do what was right for the country rather than their own popularity. The Economist claims these decisions have been what has made this country great and resulted in the current period of prosperity. They are also in awe of our immigration policy, and our acceptance of it, which allows three times as many newcomers, relative to population, as America. Over 28 per cent of our population was born overseas and half were either born abroad or are the child of someone who was. The immigrants are also young, which gives Australia a median age well below that of most European countries. IN A GREAT SPOT Our geographic location has also been working in our favour. Being on the edge of the region which is fast becoming the new economic engine of the globe has been an enormous boost for our trade. It s not just the traditional mining and agriculture sectors which have benefited from trade with Asia. It has also allowed us to diversify our economy to a point where tourism is our third biggest export, while education is in the top five. Plus our services sector is riding the burgeoning development of a middle class across Asia which not only wants luxury brand material goods, but also access to first world medical, education and aged care. Going forward, our crucial ties to Asia will provide a tricky political environment as we try and stay friends with both our biggest trading partner as well as our oldest ally while they re

38 Courier Mail, Brisbane Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 135,007 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 13,418 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 feuding with each other. WE CAN IMPROVE We all know that while we live in a remarkable country, we can do better in a whole lot of areas. The Economist highlights our failure to solve the enormous disadvantages suffered by Aborigines; how we suffer ongoing droughts but do so little to fight climate change; questions why we allowed superannuation fee rip-offs for so long; and can t understand our treatment of illegal immigrants. The magazine calls for today s politicians to come up with solutions to these problems using the same decisive thinking that our leaders used in the past. But they warn Australian voters are becoming disenchanted with the effectiveness of Government. This is forcing politicians to become increasingly febrile in order to gain popularity, rather than do what s right for the country. In other words, we re killing the golden goose because we re losing the sense of what makes us great: vision and decisiveness. We love the conclusion, and the implied challenge, from The Economist: Ambitious reforms have become rare. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Australia and Australians could do with a refresher course.

39 Courier Mail, Brisbane Author: David Libby Koch Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 135,007 Page: 48 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 13,418 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 3 of 3

40 Age, Melbourne Author: Ross Gittins Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 23 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 20,308 Words: 815 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Our oldies have, actually, never had it so good COMMENT Ross Gittins Don t let anyone tell you Scott Morrison is out of touch. When he says, if he had the money, he d increase the age pension rather than the dole, he s reflecting the views of most older Australians. Everyone knows it s the old who are the deserving poor. Except it ain t true. It was true once, but not for many years. You might expect the Prime Minister to be better informed than the average punter, but Morrison is from the new breed of politician who see a leader s job as to reflect the voters misperceptions to them. Read the focus group reports, not the briefing notes. Something Morrison clearly hasn t read is the research briefs published last week summarising the findings of the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research an outfit funded by the federal government to ensure it (and the rest of us) are well-informed about matters such as the adequacy of the age pension. According to the centre s director, Professor John Piggott, of the University of NSW, our analysis shows that standards of living of older people have improved over the last decade... Households reaching retirement age today have incomes about 45 per cent higher than those reaching the same milestone 10 years ago. That s a real increase of 45 per cent, after taking account of inflation. How could it be possible? Because the pension is indexed to wages rather than prices, and wages grow by a per cent or two a year faster than prices (until recently, anyway). As well, the Rudd government made a discretionary increase in pensions on top of indexation. The centre s figures show 62 per cent of age pensioners get it at the full rate, with a quarter getting a part-rate pension because of other income, and another 13 per cent on a part-rate because of the high value of their non-housing assets. The centre finds the rate of poverty (measured as less than half the median household disposable income) among everyone aged 65 and over is only a fraction higher than for everyone aged 15 to 64. Even so, by now it s wrong to think of many people retiring with nothing to support them but the pension. Our retirement income system rests on three pillars, with the means-tested, flat-rate age pension being only the first. The second pillar is compulsory employer super contributions under the super guarantee, which began formally in 1992 and reached 9 per cent of wages in Today it s 9.5 per cent. By now, therefore, most people should be retiring with some super savings, maybe quite a lot. The centre says that, in 2016, the median (most typical) super balance for individuals aged 60 to 64 was $68,000, whereas the arithmetic average was three times that, at $214,000 pushed up by a small number of very much higher balances (including mine). The median is held down by the typically much lower balances of women, which average 64 per cent less than men s. Even here, however, the centre says the gap has almost halved over the past decade. The retirement income system s third pillar is voluntary super contributions, which are tax-advantaged. Compulsory and voluntary super contributions are already sufficient to mean 40 per cent of people on the age pension have super and investments as their main income source. And 20 per cent of older people have so much other income as to make them ineligible. But the system actually has a fourth pillar: home ownership. (And a fifth: assets and other savings outside the first four pillars.) Three-quarters of age pensioners own their home. The centre estimates that, on average, living rentfree in your own home yields a saving of more than $10,000 a year. (As well, the oldest households receive health-related savings averaging about $25,000 a year.) So significant is the fourth pillar of home-ownership it s implicitly assumed in judging the age pension s adequacy meaning the quarter of age pensioners who mainly rent privately are justified in complaining about the trouble they have making ends meet. About 40 per cent of renters aged 65 and over are below the poverty line. Among those of them living alone, the poverty rate rises to 60 per cent. If Morrison really cared about the elderly poor, he d raise the pension rent supplement. In truth, however, his remarks last week were probably more about signalling: the aged particularly the better-off aged; those dreading

41 Age, Melbourne Author: Ross Gittins Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 23 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 20,308 Words: 815 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 Labor s plan to abolish unused dividend franking credits should see themselves as part of his party s base, whose interests he represents and will fight for. Renters of any age aren t part of the base. Nor are the young part of it and others with a greater risk of finding themselves on the dole so their interests take a lower priority. Don t say he didn t tell you. NATAGE A023 Standards of living of older people have improved.

42 Age, Melbourne Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 22 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 50,909 Words: 1493 Item ID: Page 1 of 4 Is corporate Australia approaching an investor-driven climate change tipping point? RISK Companies may no longer be prepared to wait for governments to take action. Ruth Williams In the parlance of climate science, a tipping point is a dire prospect a critical threshold breach that triggers an abrupt and rapid change in climate. But last week, Australia s second-biggest asset manager used the phrase in a more optimistic sense to describe a shift in how NATAGE A022 investors, regulators and companies are thinking about the varied risks that climate change poses, and what they should actually do about it. A string of recent events from financial regulators pushing companies on material climate risks, to the recently surveyed views of directors ranking climate change as a top priority amount to a real tipping point in how Australia is grappling with climate change, Pablo Berrutti, head of responsible investments for Asia Pacific at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, told Fairfax Media. Climate breakdown has diverse, urgent and complex implications for companies and investors, Berrutti says. But he believes you re seeing the greatest amount of momentum on this issue that we ve ever had. Last month, investors granted unprecedented levels of support to climate-focused shareholder campaigns at the Whitehaven Coal and Origin Energy AGMs, while Westpac narrowly avoided facing its own resolution at its upcoming AGM. A mining industry conference in Melbourne last week was dominated by talk of sustainability and climate change. The release last year of new climate reporting guidelines known as TCFD, developed by a Michael Bloomberg-led G20 taskforce and framed around the Paris agreement targets, has also been significant, winning the ing of major investors, companies and regulators around the world. And at the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia conference, also last week, its chief executive Simon O Conner spoke of an inflection point highlighting the recent milestone of more than half of Australia s managed investments some $866 billion worth now being managed as responsible investments, according to KPMG research. Our hope is no longer in politics, O Conner says. It s in business and investment... that investors are stepping up right now and are looking to flex their ownership muscle is a really positive development. The recent release of the UN s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which states that halting global warming to 1.5 degrees would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems should focus all of our minds, Berrutti says. Big questions lie ahead. Among investors, action on climate has of- ten involved pushing for information from companies about the climate change-related risks they face, including risks to company assets and infrastructure from impacts like increased droughts, floods or storms; and transition risks like future regulations and Continued Page 25 Our hope is no longer in politics. Simon O Conner, RIAA Pablo Berrutti is seeing great momentum on climate change.

43 Age, Melbourne Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 22 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 50,909 Words: 1493 Item ID: Page 2 of 4 Investors growing restive on climate change From Page 23 technology changes impacting demand for fossil fuels. But as companies start providing this information, what comes next? FULL AGENDA O Conner says the historic votes at the Origin and Whitehaven AGMs reflect investor frustration on climate issues. Such shareholder campaigns have become more common in recent years, but have traditionally struggled to win more than modest levels of support. This AGM season, that abruptly changed. A resolution from NGO the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, pushing Origin Energy to disclose more about its membership of lobby groups especially those involved in Australia s climate and energy policy debate scored a 46 per cent vote in favour at its AGM late last month, a sharp rise on the votes garnered by similar resolutions at BHP last November (10 per cent) and Rio Tinto in May (18 per cent). At Whitehaven Coal, a Market Forces resolution called on the company to boost its disclosure of climate-related financial risks including through so-called scenario analysis, where a company maps out the possible impact on its business of climate changeinduced scenarios (a process encouraged by the TCFD). That vote secured 40 per cent shareholder approval. Both Origin and Whitehaven called on investors to oppose the resolutions. Whitehaven said the activists behind the motion were flawed in their thinking, saying it already considered climate change risks, and had agreed to report using the TCFD recommendations. What we ve got here is the notion as a coal company we don t think about these things, its chief executive, Paul Flynn, said on the day of the AGM. I think we ve disclosed fairly well over time but I think it was a strong message from shareholders that they d like to see further disclosure, said Origin s chief executive, Frank Calabria, following the protest vote at its AGM. Big long-term investors socalled universal owners have the most closely aligned time horizons with the emerging impacts of climate change, RIAA s O Conner says. Global funds giant Vanguard, for example, needs consistent and comparable data on climate risk to judge leaders and laggards, says its head of investment stewardship, Glenn Booraem. It s critically important for us that market values reflect the material risks that companies are exposed to. But there are other pressures at play. O Conner says super funds are facing more scrutiny and pressure from members about the climate impact of their investments. And investors are themselves coming under regulator pressure to consider and disclose the climate risk in their portfolios, and from a legal perspective, to be mindful of their fiduciary duties to members. RISK WEIGHTING But last month, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission lambasted the quality of reporting on climate change by Australian companies, noting that the information provided is often fragmented and of limited use to investors. It found that just 17 per cent of companies examined disclosed climate change as a material risk. This is stark, considering that governance research firm Regnan has concluded that 44 per cent of the ASX200 have elevated nearterm exposures to one or more aspects of climate change risk. Disclosure of physical risks from climate change is particularly lagging, both ASIC and Regnan have warned. Eight out of nine of the most extremely exposed stocks that we look at, it s the physical climate impacts that are key, says Regnan s acting chief executive Alison George. Those exposures are nearterm and should be being discussed in their disclosures now. But for a passive funds-heavy investor like Vanguard, a problem arises when companies won t respond to engagement like discussions and requests which accounts for the fund manager s increased willingness to shareholder resolutions. ACTION STATION One question is what actions will flow from investors and companies as the market absorbs an increasing volume of climate change-related disclosures. Market Forces wants the conversation to shift beyond mere disclosure of climate-related risks. It seems investors want companies to disclose climate risk, but not take obvious steps needed to manage that risk, says researcher Will van de Pol. Last month, investors ed the call for Whitehaven Coal to step up its disclosure on climate risk. But they shunned another resolution pushing the company to explicitly align its strategy with the Paris agreement s goals. When it comes to shareholder resolutions, investors are reluctant to veer too close to operational

44 Age, Melbourne Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 22 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 50,909 Words: 1493 Item ID: Page 3 of 4 issues considered the domain of management. But Regnan s Alison George argues that the work expected of companies through the TCFD will inevitably lead to changed business decisions, because it will push companies to consider the resilience of their businesses in coming years and decades. Investors are not just talking about climate disclosure, she says. They are also talking about action. When they have private conversations with companies, they are looking for emissions reductions, they are looking for energy efficiency responses, they are looking for companies to adopt resiliency measures to help them adapt to climate change. Says O Conner: We need to start with the information on the table. Then we can have the conversation about whether we believe [companies ] assumptions, [and] whether we are comfortable with timing of the transition that s proposed. Berrutti notes a tendency for the outcome of companies scenario analysis to be that the company strategy is fine, and they can continue on as they are. Which, if you look at the science around climate change, that s clearly not going to be the case at least for most companies. What we need to do is reduce emissions as quickly as possible... companies need to be thinking about transition planning, as opposed to just using [the scenario analysis] to reinforce existing strategy. Some investors have opted for screening and divestment of fossil fuel-linked holdings. But most big investors argue against this course, and for the big passive managers it s not an option. The investment community, for the most part, can t divest their way out of climate change, O Conner says. It s all-pervading, across the economy. Regnan s Alison George says investors want to see action. Vanguard needs consistent data, says Glenn Booraem. Paul Flynn, CEO of Whitehaven Coal, says the company does think about climate change.

45 Age, Melbourne Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 22 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 50,909 Words: 1493 Item ID: Page 4 of 4 Divestment of fossil fuel-linked holdings such as coal won t suffice. Photo: Nic Walker

46 Age, Melbourne Author: Clancy Yeates Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 83,229 Page: 22 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 15,329 Words: 514 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 RETAIL BANKING CBA, Westpac profits to show soft drop Clancy Yeates The country s two biggest banks will this week reveal how their flagship consumer-facing businesses are faring as growth slows in the $1.6 trillion mortgage market, and margins are crunched by home loan discounts and rising funding costs. Westpac and Commonwealth Bank, which control about half the mortgage market between them, are expected to confirm the weakening conditions in the retail banking industry. Analysts have pencilled in a small rise in Westpac s profit to about $8 billion when it reports its full-year results today, while Commonwealth Bank is tipped to notch up first-quarter profits of roughly $2.4 billion, to be revealed at its annual general meeting in Brisbane on Wednesday. A key feature of National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank s annual profits last week was the weakness in retail banking, which is of greater importance to CBA and Westpac s bottom lines. NAB s retail banking profits fell 5.8 per cent, and ANZ s fell 4 per cent. You ve got falling home lending growth, you ve got intense competition in the mortgage book, you ve got not really enough of the rise in funding costs passed through, said Clime Asset Management senior analyst David Walker. It s a tough and tightening environment in retail banking. Even so, NAB and ANZ also reassured the market that dividends can be sustained, because the industry continues to experience historically low loss rates on loans. Macquarie analyst Victor German said the ANZ and NAB results had confirmed conditions were soft in retail banking, and that bad debts remained very low across the industry. Probably the main read-through for CBA is that credit quality is still holding up well, and capital levels are improving across the sector because credit growth remains anaemic, he said. Mr German added that margins for Westpac, ANZ and CBA would improve after the September quarter, given they had raised variable mortgage rates. At CBA s annual general meeting, chairman Catherine Livingstone is expected to face questions from shareholders over the run of scandals at the bank, but a first strike on executive pay looks unlikely, based on the recommendations of leading proxy advisers. CBA s annual report said senior executives lost more than $100 million in pay over the past two years in response to the string of scandals and there has been extensive change to the bank s board. Proxy adviser ISS recommended clients vote in favour of all resolutions put by the company, saying the board had taken steps to deal with CBA s governance. The report added it was obviously concerning some current and former executives received a bonus payment in the 2018 financial year. The Australian Shareholders Association said it intended to vote in favour of all items, except for the granting of long-term incentives to chief executive Matt Comyn. CBA s remuneration report was supported by 92 per cent of CBA shareholders last year, after it made a series of changes in response to an investor lash that gave the bank a first strike on executive pay in Key points Industry still experiencing low loss rates on loans. First strike on executive pay at CBA appears unlikely.

47 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Clancy Yeates Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 19,718 Words: 514 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 RETAIL BANKING CBA, Westpac profits to show soft drop Clancy Yeates The country s two biggest banks will this week reveal how their flagship consumer-facing businesses are faring as growth slows in the $1.6 trillion mortgage market, and margins are crunched by home loan discounts and rising funding costs. Westpac and Commonwealth Bank, which control about half the mortgage market between them, are expected to confirm the weakening conditions in the retail banking industry. Analysts have pencilled in a small rise in Westpac s profit to about $8 billion when it reports its full-year results today, while Commonwealth Bank is tipped to notch up first-quarter profits of roughly $2.4 billion, to be revealed at its annual general meeting in Brisbane on Wednesday. A key feature of National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank s annual profits last week was the weakness in retail banking, which is of greater importance to CBA and Westpac s bottom lines. NAB s retail banking profits fell 5.8 per cent, and ANZ s fell 4 per cent. You ve got falling home lending growth, you ve got intense competition in the mortgage book, you ve got not really enough of the rise in funding costs passed through, said Clime Asset Management senior analyst David Walker. It s a tough and tightening environment in retail banking. Even so, NAB and ANZ also reassured the market that dividends can be sustained, because the industry continues to experience historically low loss rates on loans. Macquarie analyst Victor German said the ANZ and NAB results had confirmed conditions were soft in retail banking, and that bad debts remained very low across the industry. Probably the main read-through for CBA is that credit quality is still holding up well, and capital levels are improving across the sector because credit growth remains anaemic, he said. Mr German added that margins for Westpac, ANZ and CBA would improve after the September quarter, given they had raised variable mortgage rates. At CBA s annual general meeting, chairman Catherine Livingstone is expected to face questions from shareholders over the run of scandals at the bank, but a first strike on executive pay looks unlikely, based on the recommendations of leading proxy advisers. CBA s annual report said senior executives lost more than $100 million in pay over the past two years in response to the string of scandals and there has been extensive change to the bank s board. Proxy adviser ISS recommended clients vote in favour of all resolutions put by the company, saying the board had taken steps to deal with CBA s governance. The report added it was obviously concerning some current and former executives received a bonus payment in the 2018 financial year. The Australian Shareholders Association said it intended to vote in favour of all items, except for the granting of long-term incentives to chief executive Matt Comyn. CBA s remuneration report was supported by 92 per cent of CBA shareholders last year, after it made a series of changes in response to an investor lash that gave the bank a first strike on executive pay in Key points Industry still experiencing low loss rates on loans. First strike on executive pay at CBA appears unlikely.

48 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 66,648 Words: 1498 Item ID: Page 1 of 4 Is corporate Australia approaching an investor-driven climate change tipping point? RISK Companies may no longer be prepared to wait for governments to take action. Ruth Williams In the parlance of climate science, a tipping point is a dire prospect a critical threshold breach that triggers an abrupt and rapid change in climate. But last week, Australia s second-biggest asset manager used the phrase in a more optimistic sense to describe a shift in how 1HERSA1 A026 investors, regulators and companies are thinking about the varied risks that climate change poses, and what they should actually do about it. A string of recent events from financial regulators pushing companies on material climate risks, to the recently surveyed views of directors ranking climate change as a top priority amount to a real tipping point in how Australia is grappling with climate change, Pablo Berrutti, head of responsible investments for Asia Pacific at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, told Fairfax Media. Climate breakdown has diverse, urgent and complex implications for companies and investors, Berrutti says. But he believes you re seeing the greatest amount of momentum on this issue that we ve ever had. Last month, investors granted unprecedented levels of support to climate-focused shareholder campaigns at the Whitehaven Coal and Origin Energy AGMs, while Westpac narrowly avoided facing its own resolution at its upcoming AGM. A mining industry conference in Melbourne last week was dominated by talk of sustainability and climate change. The release last year of new climate reporting guidelines known as TCFD, developed by a Michael Bloomberg-led G20 taskforce and framed around the Paris agreement targets, has also been significant, winning the ing of major investors, companies and regulators around the world. And at the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia conference, also last week, its chief executive Simon O Conner spoke of an inflection point highlighting the recent milestone of more than half of Australia s managed investments some $866 billion worth now being managed as responsible investments, according to KPMG research. Our hope is no longer in politics, O Conner says. It s in business and investment... that investors are stepping up right now and are looking to flex their ownership muscle is a really positive development. The recent release of the UN s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which states that halting global warming to 1.5 degrees would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems should focus all of our minds, Berrutti says. Big questions lie ahead. Among investors, action on climate has often involved pushing for information from companies about the climate change-related risks they face, including risks to company assets and infrastructure from impacts like increased droughts, floods or storms; and transition risks like future regulations and Continued Page 29 Our hope is no longer in politics. Simon O Conner, RIAA

49 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 66,648 Words: 1498 Item ID: Page 2 of 4 Pablo Berrutti is seeing great momentum on climate change. Investors growing restive on climate change From Page 27 technology changes impacting demand for fossil fuels. But as companies start providing this information, what comes next? FULL AGENDA O Conner says the historic votes at the Origin and Whitehaven AGMs reflect investor frustration on climate issues. Such shareholder campaigns have become more common in recent years, but have traditionally struggled to win more than modest levels of support. This AGM season, that abruptly changed. A resolution from NGO the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, pushing Origin Energy to disclose more about its membership of lobby groups especially those involved in Australia s climate and energy policy debate scored a 46 per cent vote in favour at its AGM late last month, a sharp rise on the votes garnered by similar resolutions at BHP last November (10 per cent) and Rio Tinto in May (18 per cent). At Whitehaven Coal, a Market Forces resolution called on the company to boost its disclosure of climate-related financial risks including through so-called scenario analysis, where a company maps out the possible impact on its business of climate changeinduced scenarios (a process encouraged by the TCFD). That vote secured 40 per cent shareholder approval. Both Origin and Whitehaven called on investors to oppose the resolutions. Whitehaven said the activists behind the motion were flawed in their thinking, saying it already considered climate change risks, and had agreed to report using the TCFD recommendations. What we ve got here is the notion as a coal company we don t think about these things, its chief executive, Paul Flynn, said on the day of the AGM. I think we ve disclosed fairly well over time but I think it was a strong message from shareholders that they d like to see further disclosure, said Origin s chief executive, Frank Calabria, following the protest vote at its AGM. Big long-term investors socalled universal owners have the most closely aligned time horizons with the emerging impacts of climate change, RIAA s O Conner says. Global funds giant Vanguard, for example, needs consistent and comparable data on climate risk to judge leaders and laggards, says its head of investment stewardship, Glenn Booraem. It s critically important for us that market values reflect the material risks that companies are exposed to. But there are other pressures at play. O Conner says super funds are facing more scrutiny and pressure from members about the climate impact of their investments. And investors are themselves coming under regulator pressure to consider and disclose the climate risk in their portfolios, and from a legal perspective, to be mindful of their fiduciary duties to members. RISK WEIGHTING But last month, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission lambasted the quality of reporting on climate change by Australian companies, noting that the information provided is often fragmented and of limited use to investors. It found that just 17 per cent of companies examined disclosed climate change as a material risk. This is stark, considering that governance research firm Regnan has concluded that 44 per cent of the ASX200 have elevated nearterm exposures to one or more aspects of climate change risk. Disclosure of physical risks from climate change is particularly lagging, both ASIC and Regnan have warned. Eight out of nine of the most extremely exposed stocks that we look at, it s the physical climate impacts that are key, says Regnan s acting chief executive Alison George.

50 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 66,648 Words: 1498 Item ID: Page 3 of 4 Those exposures are nearterm and should be being discussed in their disclosures now. But for a passive funds-heavy investor like Vanguard, a problem arises when companies won t respond to engagement like discussions and requests which accounts for the fund manager s increased willingness to shareholder resolutions. ACTION STATION One question is what actions will flow from investors and companies as the market absorbs an increasing volume of climate change-related disclosures. Market Forces wants the conversation to shift beyond mere disclosure of climate-related risks. It seems investors want companies to disclose climate risk, but not take obvious steps needed to manage that risk, says researcher Will van de Pol. Last month, investors ed the call for Whitehaven Coal to step up its disclosure on climate risk. But they shunned another resolution pushing the company to explicitly align its strategy with the Paris agreement s goals. When it comes to shareholder resolutions, investors are reluctant to veer too close to operational issues considered the domain of management. But Regnan s Alison George argues that the work expected of companies through the TCFD will inevitably lead to changed business decisions, because it will push companies to consider the resilience of their businesses in coming years and decades. Investors are not just talking about climate disclosure, she says. They are also talking about action. When they have private conversations with companies, they are looking for emissions reductions, they are looking for energy efficiency responses, they are looking for companies to adopt resiliency measures to help them adapt to climate change. Says O Conner: We need to start with the information on the table. Then we can have the conversation about whether we believe [companies ] assumptions, [and] whether we are comfortable with timing of the transition that s proposed. Berrutti notes a tendency for the outcome of companies scenario analysis to be that the company strategy is fine, and they can continue on as they are. Which, if you look at the science around climate change, that s clearly not going to be the case at least for most companies. What we need to do is reduce emissions as quickly as possible... companies need to be thinking about transition planning, as opposed to just using [the scenario analysis] to reinforce existing strategy. Some investors have opted for screening and divestment of fossil fuel-linked holdings. But most big investors argue against this course, and for the big passive managers it s not an option. The investment community, for the most part, can t divest their way out of climate change, O Conner says. It s all-pervading, across the economy. 1HERSA1 A029 Regnan s Alison George says investors want to see action. Vanguard needs consistent data, says Glenn Booraem. Paul Flynn, CEO of Whitehaven Coal, says the company does think about climate change.

51 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 26 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 66,648 Words: 1498 Item ID: Page 4 of 4 i m g c n c e y a t v a t e i e t Divestment of fossil fuel-linked holdings such as coal won t suffice. Photo: Nic Walker s t v l

52 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Ross Gittins Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 27 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 25,539 Words: 815 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Our oldies have, actually, never had it so good COMMENT Ross Gittins Don t let anyone tell you Scott Morrison is out of touch. When he says, if he had the money, he d increase the age pension rather than the dole, he s reflecting the views of most older Australians. Everyone knows it s the old who are the deserving poor. Except it ain t true. It was true once, but not for many years. You might expect the Prime Minister to be better informed than the average punter, but Morrison is from the new breed of politician who see a leader s job as to reflect the voters misperceptions to them. Read the focus group reports, not the briefing notes. Something Morrison clearly hasn t read is the research briefs published last week summarising the findings of the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research an outfit funded by the federal government to ensure it (and the rest of us) are well-informed about matters such as the adequacy of the age pension. According to the centre s director, Professor John Piggott, of the University of NSW, our analysis shows that standards of living of older people have improved over the last decade... Households reaching retirement age today have incomes about 45 per cent higher than those reaching the same milestone 10 years ago. That s a real increase of 45 per cent, after taking account of inflation. How could it be possible? Because the pension is indexed to wages rather than prices, and wages grow by a per cent or two a year faster than prices (until recently, anyway). As well, the Rudd government made a discretionary increase in pensions on top of indexation. The centre s figures show 62 per cent of age pensioners get it at the full rate, with a quarter getting a part-rate pension because of other income, and another 13 per cent on a part-rate because of the high value of their non-housing assets. The centre finds the rate of poverty (measured as less than half the median household disposable income) among everyone aged 65 and over is only a fraction higher than for everyone aged 15 to 64. Even so, by now it s wrong to think of many people retiring with nothing to support them but the pension. Our retirement income system rests on three pillars, with the means-tested, flat-rate age pension being only the first. The second pillar is compulsory employer super contributions under the super guarantee, which began formally in 1992 and reached 9 per cent of wages in Today it s 9.5 per cent. By now, therefore, most people should be retiring with some super savings, maybe quite a lot. The centre says that, in 2016, the median (most typical) super balance for individuals aged 60 to 64 was $68,000, whereas the arithmetic average was three times that, at $214,000 pushed up by a small number of very much higher balances (including mine). The median is held down by the typically much lower balances of women, which average 64 per cent less than men s. Even here, however, the centre says the gap has almost halved over the past decade. The retirement income system s third pillar is voluntary super contributions, which are tax-advantaged. Compulsory and voluntary super contributions are already sufficient to mean 40 per cent of people on the age pension have super and investments as their main income source. And 20 per cent of older people have so much other income as to make them ineligible. But the system actually has a fourth pillar: home ownership. (And a fifth: assets and other savings outside the first four pillars.) Three-quarters of age pensioners own their home. The centre estimates that, on average, living rentfree in your own home yields a saving of more than $10,000 a year. (As well, the oldest households receive health-related savings averaging about $25,000 a year.) So significant is the fourth pillar of home-ownership it s implicitly assumed in judging the age pension s adequacy meaning the quarter of age pensioners who mainly rent privately are justified in complaining about the trouble they have making ends meet. About 40 per cent of renters aged 65 and over are below the poverty line. Among those of them living alone, the poverty rate rises to 60 per cent. If Morrison really cared about the elderly poor, he d raise the pension rent supplement. In truth, however, his remarks last week were probably more about signalling: the aged particularly the better-off aged; those dreading

53 Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Author: Ross Gittins Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 88,634 Page: 27 Printed Size: cm² Region: NSW Market: Australia ASR: AUD 25,539 Words: 815 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 Labor s plan to abolish unused dividend franking credits should see themselves as part of his party s base, whose interests he represents and will fight for. Renters of any age aren t part of the base. Nor are the young part of it and others with a greater risk of finding themselves on the dole so their interests take a lower priority. Don t say he didn t tell you. 1HERSA1 A027 Standards of living of older people have improved.

54 Hobart Mercury, Hobart Author: Anthony Keane Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 28,265 Page: 18 Printed Size: cm² Region: TAS Market: Australia ASR: AUD 1,713 Words: 434 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth t assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

55 Canberra Times, Canberra Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 17,579 Page: 34 Printed Size: cm² Region: ACT Market: Australia ASR: AUD 24,333 Words: 1499 Item ID: Page 1 of 4 Is corporate Australia approaching an investor-driven climate change tipping point? RISK Companies may no longer be prepared to wait for governments to take action. Ruth Williams In the parlance of climate science, a tipping point is a dire prospect a critical threshold breach that triggers an abrupt and rapid change in climate. But last week, Australia s second-biggest asset manager used the phrase in a more optimistic sense to describe a shift in how investors, regulators and companies are thinking about the varied risks that climate change poses, and what they should actually do about it. A string of recent events from financial regulators pushing companies on material climate risks, to the recently surveyed views of directors ranking climate change as a top priority amount to a real tipping point in how Australia is grappling with climate change, Pablo Berrutti, head of responsible investments for Asia Pacific at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, told Fairfax Media. Climate breakdown has diverse, urgent and complex implications for companies and investors, Berrutti says. But he believes you re seeing the greatest amount of momentum on this issue that we ve ever had. Last month, investors granted unprecedented levels of support to climate-focused shareholder campaigns at the Whitehaven Coal and Origin Energy AGMs, while Westpac narrowly avoided facing its own resolution at its upcoming AGM. A mining industry conference in Melbourne last week was dominated by talk of sustainability and climate change. The release last year of new climate reporting guidelines known as TCFD, developed by a Michael Bloomberg-led G20 taskforce and framed around the Paris agreement targets, has also been significant, winning the ing of major investors, companies and regulators around the world. And at the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia conference, also last week, its chief executive Simon O Conner spoke of an inflection point highlighting the recent milestone of more than half of Australia s managed investments some $866 billion worth now being managed as responsible investments, according to KPMG research. Our hope is no longer in politics, O Conner says. It s in business and investment... that investors are stepping up right now and are looking to flex their ownership muscle is a really positive development. The recent release of the UN s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which states that halting global warming to 1.5 degrees would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems should focus all of our minds, Berrutti says. Big questions lie ahead. Among investors, action on climate has often involved pushing for information from companies about the climate change-related risks they face, including risks to company assets and infrastructure from impacts like increased droughts, floods or storms; and transition risks like future regulations and Continued Page 37 Our hope is no longer in politics. Simon O Conner, RIAA Pablo Berrutti is seeing great momentum on climate change.

56 Canberra Times, Canberra Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 17,579 Page: 34 Printed Size: cm² Region: ACT Market: Australia ASR: AUD 24,333 Words: 1499 Item ID: Page 2 of 4 Investors growing restive on climate change From Page 35 technology changes impacting demand for fossil fuels. But as companies start providing this information, what comes next? FULL AGENDA O Conner says the historic votes at the Origin and Whitehaven AGMs reflect investor frustration on climate issues. Such shareholder campaigns have become more common in recent years, but have traditionally struggled to win more than modest levels of support. This AGM season, that abruptly changed. A resolution from NGO the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, pushing Origin Energy to disclose more about its membership of lobby groups especially those involved in Australia s climate and energy policy debate scored a 46 per cent vote in favour at its AGM late last month, a sharp rise on the votes garnered by similar resolutions at BHP last November (10 per cent) and Rio Tinto in May (18 per cent). At Whitehaven Coal, a Market Forces resolution called on the company to boost its disclosure of climate-related financial risks including through so-called scenario analysis, where a company maps out the possible impact on its business of climate changeinduced scenarios (a process encouraged by the TCFD). That vote secured 40 per cent shareholder approval. Both Origin and Whitehaven called on investors to oppose the resolutions. Whitehaven said the activists behind the motion were flawed in their thinking, saying it already considered climate change risks, and had agreed to report using the TCFD recommendations. What we ve got here is the notion as a coal company we don t think about these things, its chief executive, Paul Flynn, said on the day of the AGM. I think we ve disclosed fairly well over time but I think it was a strong message from shareholders that they d like to see further disclosure, said Origin s chief executive, Frank Calabria, following the protest vote at its AGM. Big long-term investors socalled universal owners have the most closely aligned time horizons with the emerging impacts of climate change, RIAA s O Conner says. Global funds giant Vanguard, for example, needs consistent and comparable data on climate risk to judge leaders and laggards, says its head of investment stewardship, Glenn Booraem. It s critically important for us that market values reflect the material risks that companies are exposed to. But there are other pressures at play. O Conner says super funds are facing more scrutiny and pressure from members about the climate impact of their investments. And investors are themselves coming under regulator pressure to consider and disclose the climate risk in their portfolios, and from a legal perspective, to be mindful of their fiduciary duties to members. RISK WEIGHTING But last month, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission lambasted the quality of reporting on climate change by Australian companies, noting that the information provided is often fragmented and of limited use to investors. It found that just 17 per cent of companies examined disclosed climate change as a material risk. This is stark, considering that governance research firm Regnan has concluded that 44 per cent of the ASX200 have elevated nearterm exposures to one or more aspects of climate change risk. Disclosure of physical risks from climate change is particularly lagging, both ASIC and Regnan have warned. Eight out of nine of the most extremely exposed stocks that we look at, it s the physical climate impacts that are key, says Regnan s acting chief executive Alison George. Those exposures are nearterm and should be being discussed in their disclosures now. But for a passive funds-heavy investor like Vanguard, a problem arises when companies won t respond to engagement like discussions and requests which accounts for the fund manager s increased willingness to shareholder resolutions. ACTION STATION One question is what actions will flow from investors and companies as the market absorbs an increasing volume of climate change-related disclosures. Market Forces wants the conversation to shift beyond mere disclosure of climate-related risks. It seems investors want companies to disclose climate risk, but not take obvious steps needed to manage that risk, says researcher Will van de Pol. Last month, investors ed the call for Whitehaven Coal to step up its disclosure on climate risk. But they shunned another resolution pushing the company to explicitly align its strategy with the Paris agreement s goals. When it comes to shareholder resolutions, investors are reluctant to veer too close to operational issues considered the domain of management. But Regnan s Alison George argues that the work expected of companies through the TCFD will inevitably lead to changed business decisions, because it will push companies to consider the resilience of their businesses in coming

57 Canberra Times, Canberra Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 17,579 Page: 34 Printed Size: cm² Region: ACT Market: Australia ASR: AUD 24,333 Words: 1499 Item ID: Page 3 of 4 years and decades. Investors are not just talking about climate disclosure, she says. They are also talking about action. When they have private conversations with companies, they are looking for emissions reductions, they are looking for energy efficiency responses, they are looking for companies to adopt resiliency measures to help them adapt to climate change. Says O Conner: We need to start with the information on the table. Then we can have the conversation about whether we believe [companies ] assumptions, [and] whether we are comfortable with timing of the transition that s proposed. Berrutti notes a tendency for the outcome of companies scenario analysis to be that the company strategy is fine, and they can continue on as they are. Which, if you look at the science around climate change, that s clearly not going to be the case at least for most companies. What we need to do is reduce emissions as quickly as possible... companies need to be thinking about transition planning, as opposed to just using [the scenario analysis] to reinforce existing strategy. Some investors have opted for screening and divestment of fossil fuel-linked holdings. But most big investors argue against this course, and for the big passive managers it s not an option. The investment community, for the most part, can t divest their way out of climate change, O Conner says. It s all-pervading, across the economy. Paul Flynn, CEO of Whitehaven Coal, says the company does think about climate change. Vanguard needs consistent data, says Glenn Booraem. Regnan s Alison George says investors want to see action.

58 05 Nov 2018 Canberra Times, Canberra Author: Ruth Williams Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 17,579 Page: 34 Printed Size: cm² Region: ACT Market: Australia ASR: AUD 24,333 Words: 1499 Item ID: Divestment of fossil fuel-linked holdings such as coal won t suffice. Photo: Nic Walker Page 4 of 4

59 Canberra Times, Canberra Author: Ross Gittins Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 17,579 Page: 35 Printed Size: cm² Region: ACT Market: Australia ASR: AUD 9,503 Words: 815 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Our oldies have, actually, never had it so good COMMENT Ross Gittins Don t let anyone tell you Scott Morrison is out of touch. When he says, if he had the money, he d increase the age pension rather than the dole, he s reflecting the views of most older Australians. Everyone knows it s the old who are the deserving poor. Except it ain t true. It was true once, but not for many years. You might expect the Prime Minister to be better informed than the average punter, but Morrison is from the new breed of politician who see a leader s job as to reflect the voters misperceptions to them. Read the focus group reports, not the briefing notes. Something Morrison clearly hasn t read is the research briefs published last week summarising the findings of the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research an outfit funded by the federal government to ensure it (and the rest of us) are well-informed about matters such as the adequacy of the age pension. According to the centre s director, Professor John Piggott, of the University of NSW, our analysis shows that standards of living of older people have improved over the last decade... Households reaching retirement age today have incomes about 45 per cent higher than those reaching the same milestone 10 years ago. That s a real increase of 45 per cent, after taking account of inflation. How could it be possible? Because the pension is indexed to wages rather than prices, and wages grow by a per cent or two a year faster than prices (until recently, anyway). As well, the Rudd government made a discretionary increase in pensions on top of indexation. The centre s figures show 62 per cent of age pensioners get it at the full rate, with a quarter getting a part-rate pension because of other income, and another 13 per cent on a part-rate because of the high value of their non-housing assets. The centre finds the rate of poverty (measured as less than half the median household disposable income) among everyone aged 65 and over is only a fraction higher than for everyone aged 15 to 64. Even so, by now it s wrong to think of many people retiring with nothing to support them but the pension. Our retirement income system rests on three pillars, with the means-tested, flat-rate age pension being only the first. The second pillar is compulsory employer super contributions under the super guarantee, which began formally in 1992 and reached 9 per cent of wages in Today it s 9.5 per cent. By now, therefore, most people should be retiring with some super savings, maybe quite a lot. The centre says that, in 2016, the median (most typical) super balance for individuals aged 60 to 64 was $68,000, whereas the arithmetic average was three times that, at $214,000 pushed up by a small number of very much higher balances (including mine). The median is held down by the typically much lower balances of women, which average 64 per cent less than men s. Even here, however, the centre says the gap has almost halved over the past decade. The retirement income system s third pillar is voluntary super contributions, which are tax-advantaged. Compulsory and voluntary super contributions are already sufficient to mean 40 per cent of people on the age pension have super and investments as their main income source. And 20 per cent of older people have so much other income as to make them ineligible. But the system actually has a fourth pillar: home ownership. (And a fifth: assets and other savings outside the first four pillars.) Three-quarters of age pensioners own their home. The centre estimates that, on average, living rentfree in your own home yields a saving of more than $10,000 a year. (As well, the oldest households receive health-related savings averaging about $25,000 a year.) So significant is the fourth pillar of home-ownership it s implicitly assumed in judging the age pension s adequacy meaning the quarter of age pensioners who mainly rent privately are justified in complaining about the trouble they have making ends meet. About 40 per cent of renters aged 65 and over are below the poverty line. Among those of them living alone, the poverty rate rises to 60 per cent. If Morrison really cared about the elderly poor, he d raise the pension rent supplement. In truth, however, his remarks last week were probably more about signalling: the aged particularly the better-off aged; those dreading Labor s plan to abolish unused

60 Canberra Times, Canberra Author: Ross Gittins Section: Business News Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 17,579 Page: 35 Printed Size: cm² Region: ACT Market: Australia ASR: AUD 9,503 Words: 815 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 dividend franking credits should see themselves as part of his party s base, whose interests he represents and will fight for. Renters of any age aren t part of the base. Nor are the young part of it and others with a greater risk of finding themselves on the dole so their interests take a lower priority. Don t say he didn t tell you. Standards of living of older people have improved.

61 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Chris Bowen Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 38 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 6,877 Words: 914 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Whyfrankingcredit refunds must go Taxing investments Dividend imputation must go to its original design. The present system encourages people to be overweight on Australian shares. Chris Bowen "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in a new order of things" Niccolo Machiavelli wrote around five centuries ago. The beneficiaries of reform, he wrote, will be quiet but those who benefit from existing arrangements will be very loud in their defence of the status quo. Geoff Wilson, writing on these pages last Friday, is certainly intent on being noisy. As I have said, he is entitled to set up a partisan campaign with the Liberal Party if he wants to: that is clearly what he is doing. And the campaign is getting shriller and more ridiculous as the next election approaches. He started a petition against Labor's imputation policy but now campaigns against our negative gearing reforms as well and is clearly engaging in a political campaign, not a policy discussion. Mr Wilson can engage in politics all he likes. But he should not expect his factual inaccuracies to go unanswered. Labor will return dividend imputation to its original design, as envisaged by Paul Keating. Australia is the only country in the world that provides a refund for corporate tax paid to shareholders if they don't pay income tax. It's a $5 billion a year anomaly that must be fixed in the interest of budget responsibility. Claim: In his oped in the The Australian Financial Review, Mr Wilson claimed that franking credit refunds are about returning an "overpayment" of corporate tax. Fact: He has a different definition of "overpayment" to me. Every dollar of excess franking credits claimed as a cash refund is effectively a dollar less of company tax collected by the government for health and education. The refunds mean that every dollar of corporate tax paid by an entity is then just returned to its shareholders as a cash refund, to the extent that its shareholders do not pay income tax. At a time when people are concerned about the erosion of the tax base and that companies pay their fair share of tax, to suggest that the headline rate is an "overpayment" is remarkably out of touch. Claim: That Labor's reforms won't raise as much as we've indicated, including because the independent Parliamentary Budget Office didn't take account of the government's $1.6 million transfer balance cap in their costing. Fact: As the PBO told Senate estimates, the costing incorporates a raft of potential behavioural effects and is based on all existing government policy, including the $1.6 million transfer balance cap. The PBO went even further, confirming after questioning that the approach taken when costing this policy was "relatively conservative". Even the Treasury modelling, leaked by the government showed it would raise close to $10 billion over the forward estimates, very similar to what the PBO estimated. Claim: That Labor's policy will hit retired "battlers" and "low-income earners". Fact: Those retired Australians with the lowest wealth and income receive either a full or part pension. Every one of these 2.5 million Australians is exempted from the change. Distributional analysis has shown that for people of retirement age more than 80 per cent of the benefit of imputation refundability goes to the wealthiest 20 per cent of households. Analysis from the PBO shows that for self-managed super funds, more than half of all cash refunds accrue to people with balances over $2.4 million. To use taxable income figures, as these people do, is just fundamentally dishonest our highly concessional treatment of superannuation means people can be of significant wealth and still have no or little taxable income. Claim: There is an economic case for dividend imputation refundability because it supports the Australian share market Fact: When I learnt tax theory at university I was taught the best tax system is the least distortionary one: people should make economic decisions because of economic fundamentals, not because of favourable tax treatment The current system encourages people to be overweight Aussie shares, meaning they have not adequately spread their risk and may suffer significantly in a downturn because of this overweighting. Claim: Mr Wilson claims that Labor will "crack" if they get 50,000 or 100,000 signatures. Fact: This is, frankly,,a pretty arrogant claim. Unlike the coalition in 2013 and 2014, Labor hasn't hidden its budget plans until after the election. We've announced our plans early and proudly. In fact we announced our imputation policy in the lead-up to the Batman byelection. We've proudly campaigned for our policies in the Longman, Braddon and Perth byelections, all of which Labor won. Anybody who makes a claim that Labor will "crack" has significantly underestimated Labor's resolve to improve the sustainability of the budget and fairness of the tax system. Half the Labor frontbench has been signed up to Mr Wilson's petition without our knowledge, which makes the claim a little more laughable. Labor has shown a willingness to tackle issues that have been in the toohard basket for too long and to argue the case for ambitious reform. This sometimes involves taking on vested interests and batting away misinformation. That" s part of the reform story. Well continue to seek a mandate for dividend imputation reform and well implement that mandate if the Australian people agree at the election. Chris Bowen is shadow federal treasurer. Mr Wilson claims that Labor will 'crack' if he gets 50,000 or 100,000 signatures.

62 Australian Financial Review, Australia Section: Letters Article type : Letter Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 35 Printed Size: 93.00cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 1,881 Words: 142 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 We can do better on taxation policy Geoff Wilson argues that Australia's dividend imputation system works well ("Labor's dividend plan will smash mum-and-dad shareholders", November 2). Certainly avoiding the double taxation of dividends is good taxation policy. However, the dividend imputation system was not intended to effectively eliminate company tax. Some refinement of the current system is appropriate. Labors discriminatory plan to scrap tax refunds is poorly thought out and favours industry superannuation funds and blatantly discriminates against SMSFs. A far more balanced policy is simply to halve dividend imputation credits for all superannuation funds. To complete an equitable and efficient dividend imputation tax policy, superannuation pensions should be included in individual tax returns.the pension remains tax-free but other income is then taxed at the correct marginal tax rate and personal dividend imputation credits are appropriately applied and tax refunds are reduced in appropriate circumstances. Graeme Troy Wagstaffe.NSW

63 Australian Financial Review, Australia Section: Letters Article type : Letter Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 35 Printed Size: 93.00cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 1,881 Words: 142 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 We can do better on taxation policy Geoff Wilson argues that Australia's dividend imputation system works well ("Labor's dividend plan will smash mum-and-dad shareholders", November 2). Certainly avoiding the double taxation of dividends is good taxation policy. However, the dividend imputation system was not intended to effectively eliminate company tax. Some refinement of the current system is appropriate. Labors discriminatory plan to scrap tax refunds is poorly thought out and favours industry superannuation funds and blatantly discriminates against SMSFs. A far more balanced policy is simply to halve dividend imputation credits for all superannuation funds. To complete an equitable and efficient dividend imputation tax policy, superannuation pensions should be included in individual tax returns.the pension remains tax-free but other income is then taxed at the correct marginal tax rate and personal dividend imputation credits are appropriately applied and tax refunds are reduced in appropriate circumstances. Graeme Troy Wagstaffe.NSW

64 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Misa Han Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 5 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,070 Words: 697 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Westpac didn't break lending laws: Gleeson MisaHan A former solicitor-general says there is nothing in the law that requires banks to use customer data when assessing home loan applications and has urged the Federal Court to find against the corporate regulator's case that Westpac breached responsible lending laws. In a 31-page submission obtained by The Australian Financial Review, former solicitor-general and barrister Justin Gleeson, SC, tore down the corporate regulator's case that Westpac lent irresponsibly by using a benchmark rather than declared expenses when issuing home loans. Westpac and ASIC agreed on a $35 million fine that the judge has thus far refused to approve. If Justice Nye Perram rejects the proposed settlement, it could jeopardise the regulator's cases against other lenders and come at a crucial time because the Hayne banking commission is considering what banks should do to meet responsible lending requirements when writing home loans. Mr Gleeson advised the Federal Court that responsible lending laws do not dictate that a bank must use a customer's declared expenses or verified records of expenses for assessing home loans. Neither does the law prohibit a bank from using an estimate, average or benchmark figure for making the assessment, he said. Mr Gleeson's position is the law does require banks to gather information to verify the consumer's financial situation, but they don't necessarily have to use the information in assessing home loans. Instead, he says, banks have the flexibility on how much of the information they collect should be used, or how it is to be used, and what other information should also be included in the mix. Mr Gleeson's submission to the Federal Court was only made publicly available on Friday, nearly two weeks after his oral submission was heard in court The submission articulates for the first time Mr Gleeson's interpretation of responsible lending laws. His submission is a disaster for the regulator, which has argued it would be "absurd" if the law required banks to make inquiries about a customer's expenses but did not require banks to consider the results of these inquiries. But Mr Gleeson says it is the regulator's case that is more absurd. "We disagree that is an absurd state of affairs or otherwise frustrates the statutory purpose," he said. "On the other hand, ASIC and Westpac's constructions which do seek to 'read into' [the law] some 'use' requirement do have the potential to create absurdities and frustrate the statutory purpose." Mr Gleeson's position is seemingly at odds with that of Commissioner Kenneth Hayne's, whose preliminary view is banks should not rely on the customer at "his or her own word" or the household expenditure measure (HEM) benchmark. Commissioner Hayne's position in the interim report is banks should use the bank statements from the customer's main account to verify their expenses. Mr Gleeson said ASIC and Westpac seem to have reached a "prudent" settlement "From the limited material available, this case falls into the category where the regulator had an arguable, but not straightforward, case and the defendant bank had some strong defences but the prospect if they were rejected of facing a very large penalty," Mr Gleeson said. His recommendation is the court should not make a declaration Westpac breached responsible lending laws or order the bank to pay a $35 million civil penalty. He says ASIC and Westpac could ask the court case to be dismissed and Westpac could donate money to a charity or reach a new settlement that clearly articulates how Westpac breached lending laws. Alternatively, they go to trial and have the issues fought out, he says. ASIC was preparing to launch more responsible lending cases against bank and non-bank lenders after securing the $35 million settlement with Westpac while trying to rebuild its image as the "tough cop on the corporate beat". But instead of rubber-stamping the settlement Justice Perram took the unusual step of asking for advice from Mr Gleeson, who has since made a submission that annihilated the regulator's case. The case is also important because it will affect the way banks interpret responsible lending laws in the future. Justice Perram will deliver the judgment at a later date.

65 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Misa Han Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 5 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,070 Words: 697 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 Justin Gleeson has torn down the regulator's case, PHOTO: ALEX ELLINGHAUSEN

66 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Sally Patten Section: Companies and Markets Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 17 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,697 Words: 649 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 AMP's main issue is lack of trust Murray Sally Patten One of AMP's key problems is investors' lack of trust in the ability of the embattled wealth group to make sound decisions, chairman David Murray says. Mr Murray said he stood by AMFs $3.4 billion sale of its life insurance business, which sent the shares into a tailspin when it was announced on October 25. "hi my mind, I have no doubt that the transaction was right," Mr Murray said, blaming the ferocious response to the sale on the loss of investor confidence in the company. "If you examine what has happened to AMP over many years, a series of decisions and oversight probably left the market lacking confidence and trust in the organisation. We mooted the transaction at the AGM but a lot of people said: "We don't trust the organisation to get it right". We've got to get that trust ", Mr Murray told AFR BOSS magazine. AMP shares suffered a record oneday fall, plunging nearly 25 per cent following the announcement of the complicated deal, which entails selling the life business to Resolution Life for $1.9 billion in cash, $300 million in preference shares, $515 million in equity and a $600 million economic interest in future earnings. Boutique fund manager Merlon Capital Partners responded by sending a blistering letter to AMP demanding more information about the deal, which the firm said was dilutive and misleading. Mr Murray drew a parallel between AMP and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, where he was chief executive for 13 years between 1992 and The veteran banker said investors had a similar attitude towards CBA when it floated in "People were unsure of the organisation's capacity in a new situation. Nobody knew how to read it in a new situation," Mr Murray, who also chaired the financial system inquiry (FSI) was the inaugural chairman of the Future Fund. In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Murray expressed his frustration at the length of time it was taking to implement some of the recommendations from the FSI, but said he expected they would be implemented more quickly as a result of the banking royal commission. "The chances are now that some of the things that we initiated will get done differently and better and faster as a result of the royal commission. I think there's an issue about how long things have taken," Mr Murray said. One failing that might be rectified is the introduction of an oversight body for the regulators, the banking veteran suggested. He said he expected the royal commission would have other key benefits for the industry. "The upside is very substantial because I think it will force a deep respect for the law in the financial system. I think inevitably financial institutions here now will codify more clearly their purpose and their beliefs. That will be very powerful. It will force deeper consideration of business models and conduct," Mr Murray said. Mr Murray argued a likely simplification of the law was another potential benefit, including the ability of companies to simplify legacy products. Proper definitions of duties of care and a requirement to take them seriously would also be a positive outcome from the royal commission. Superannuation funds, Mr Murray said, should be governed according to principles similar to those in public companies or managed investment schemes. Sanctions for super fund trustees, he said, should be as stringent as they are for public companies or managed investment schemes. "That becomes a wakeup call for trustees to stand ground and act in the interest of members when there's ever any doubt" he said. On the downside, there was a danger that the provision of credit by banks would dry up, leading to a bigger shadow banking system, and that services such as financial advice would become more expensive. BOSS will bepublished this Friday in the AFR.

67 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Sally Patten Section: Companies and Markets Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 17 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,697 Words: 649 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 David Murray says the royal commission has substantial upside, PHOTO: PETER BRAIG

68 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Adele Ferguson Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 40 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 12,399 Words: 1283 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Adele Feiguso aferguson@fairfaxmedia.com.au; Twitter.@AdeleJerguson www4ifr.com I Monday 5 November 2018 Financial planners set against reform Ais far as reputations go, financial planning doesn't getmuch worse. In 2014, the former chairman of ASIC Greg Medcraft described the industry as "absolutely appalling" and said it was "heartbreaking to actually see people who have been given inappropriate advice". Commonwealth Bank whistleblower Jeff Morris accused it of rampant misconduct, lax education and poor ethics. The royal commission also waded in and painted a picture of a sector motivated by greed and dishonesty and too often forgetting the best interests of clients. Financial advice is an industry in dire need of reform. It's why it is so puzzling that sections of the industry are taking up the cudgels in an attempt to delay, dilute or redo a reform package of legislative instruments due for release this month. The legislative instruments include a code of ethics and new education standards, the exam and a professional year, compiled by the Financial Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA), an independent body set up by the government in April 2017 after a series of scandals. In the next few weeks FASEA will release the instruments embodying the code and standards for parliamentary consideration. It has given the industry until January 1, 2024, for existing advisers to have FASEA certification to be able to continue to advise clients. Existing advisers with no degrees will need to undertake eight subjects equivalent to a graduate diploma. If they hold an advance diploma in financial planning, that would count for two credits. Those who have certification with the AFA or FPA would get two more credits. There will also be a new financial adviser examination all advisers have to sit and a code of ethics. With a legislative deadline of January 1, 2019, pressure is mounting. In the lead-up to their release, which will give exact details of what" s involved, there has been a lot of mudslinging, scaremongering and political lobbying. It will be interesting to see how much traction it gets and whether FASEA - or parliamentbuckles. In a paper titled "FASEA Fiasco" the Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP) wrote: "An unfortunate story of senseless megalomania destroying an industry, careers, jobs and families." AIOFP executive director Peter Johnston went on to say: "It seems FASEA's major objective is not to facilitate higher education/ethical standards but decimate an industry, leave thousands unemployed and destroy the businesses of thousands of hard working Australians and their families - it is most unaustralian." It estimates 10,000 advisers of the 25,000 currently operating in the industry will leave over the next five years and with them 25,000 administration staff as a result of FASEA and legislative reforms to life insurance commissions. There is no question reforms will cause disruption but the industry has had years to fix itself up. hi August 2009 ASIC delivered a 184-page critique of the financial planning industry recommending commissions, volumebased bonuses and other kicks be banned due to poor behaviour. Then David Fawcett in his parliamentary inquiry in 2014 recommended lifting the standards of education to degree level and introducing a code of ethics. Around the same time, David Murray in his financial system inquiry said the government should "prioritise" a review of minimum standards in the financial planning industry, with many stakeholders "highly concerned" about low standards and most supporting "education requirements to a degree level". There have been a number of parliamentary inquiries, the royal commission and numerous ASIC reports, all calling out bad behaviour and a need for reform. There are some good financial advisers who have been pushing to professionalise the industry for years. They are educated, operate a business model based on fees instead of conflicted remuneration and put their customer interests first But they are being drowned out by the shrill scream of those who want to do it at their own pace. The problem with that is the industry has a proven track record of not being able to self-regulate. The AIOFP, which has 140 AFSL holders as members under an umbrella of 4000 advisers, has sent s to its financial planning members asking them to join a public demonstration on November 26 and 27 in Sydney and Melbourne if the precise details of the reforms "are not attractive to us". The AIOFP has been active in Canberra, lobbying both sides of politics, and circulating photos of Tania Plibersek with AIOFP members. It told members in an October 26 it was lobbing in Canberra because over the past 20 years changes have not been in advisers' best interests. It listed some of the areas where advisers came off second best, including Future of Financial Advice legislation that banned commissions, the Life Insurance Framework that included reductions in upfront commissions and trailing commissions and FASEA. They are classic examples, institutions win, advisers lose," members were told.

69 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Adele Ferguson Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 40 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 12,399 Words: 1283 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 AIOFP's Johnston told this column his plan was to make the AIOFP the "advisers association". He said he had put in place two political strategies. First, it has joined the Small Business Association to represent it in Canberra and second "we are encouraging our members to join the powerful white collar left wing union the Finance Sector Union". He said the FSU has a strong say in the ALP national financial services policy agenda and the AIOFP would manage a new financial services division with a committee that formulates strategy. "Considering an ALP government is more than likely within six months we think it makes sense to be in the tent" It has also set up an anti FASEA petition on change.org, so far attracting 28 signatures. And it has increased its presence in industry magazines, including linking the coalition's disastrous Wentworth loss to FASEA. "Wentworth loss opens Coalition to FASEA changes," the headline in IFA magazine read. It quoted Johnston saying there were more than 1500 financial advisers including support staff living in the seat of Wentworth. He told the magazine after the Wentworth loss he went to Canberra. "We had a better-than-expected meeting with seven Coalition politicians at Parliament House on Monday. We had just over 60 minutes to put our case forward to Minister Stuart Robert, Minister Kelly ODywer, Whip Nola Merino MP, Craig Kelly MP, Bert van Manen MP, Tim Wilson MP and Alan TudgeMP." The message from the minister and benchers, Johnston told IFA was that the original FASEA proposal would be mitigated and adjusted significantly. "That"s the impression we got" he said. "Based on direct feed from the committee and the positive support we receivedfrom the group, we feel FASEA will be greatly mitigating the legislative instruments [LI] due to be released next month," he said. Given FASEA is an independent body it would be alarming if it was being subjected to political influence of any kind. Johnston later told this column at the meeting with the seven coalition politicians he made it clear why they will have 25,000 advisers, 75,000 support staff and 3 million satisfied clients against them at the next election. "We pointed out that in the seat of Wentworth there were over 2500 advice industry persons voting against them. This issue is not one where consumers will easily forget When you have your dignity, your professional life, your career and your family's financial position attacked you will hate the perpetrators for life. We told them the industry currently hates them." It is all getting very heated but at the end of the day existing planners have until 2024 to adapt to the new education requirements. Winning trust doesn't come easy. The problem with that is the industry has a proven track record of not being able to self-regulate. The Wentworth byelection may have opened the door to changes, some planners believe. PHOTO: JAMES BRICKWOOD

70 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Nick Lenaghan Section: Property Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 34 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,551 Words: 435 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 ISPT aspires higher with $400m uni tower NickLenaghan Super fund developer and investor ISPT will create a $400 million vertical campus for Victoria University in the heart of Melbourne's CBD, the latest major project to emerge as tertiary education providers increase their presence in city centres. ISPT has won a tender run by Flagstaff Partners to develop the new 32-storey campus which will be leased to Victoria University on a 30-year deal. With $16 billion in assets under management, ISPT pipped the other shortlisted candidates, listed fund manager Charter Hall and infrastructure investment firm Plenary, as foreshadowed earlier this year in Street Talk. While Victoria University is already in the CBD, the decision to increase its real estate footprint comes as major tertiary educators step up their presence in central cities, taking advantage of the increasing presence of international students and residents. Chief executive Daryl Browning said the transaction demonstrated the longterm capital alignment of industry superannuation funds with the tertiary education sector. "We think the sector is obviously attractive as unis are looking to establish themselves in the city," he told The Australian Financial Review. "While a lot are capital-rich with big campuses, they are under pressure from government and looking for capital partners." Under the deal, ISPT will acquire separate properties from Victoria University, including the historic former registry and land titles office buildings along Queen Street The heritage-listed buildings will be retained as part of the overall project The new 24,000-square-metre tower will rise on a third site on Little Lonsdale Street in the precinct controlled by Victoria University, which ISPT will also take over. The new building will incorporate office and teaching space for the university's colleges of business, health and biomedicine, law and justice among other functions. A permit is already in place for a building on the Little Lonsdale Street site designed by Daryl Jackson Architects. Construction is expected to kick off next year with completion due in Victoria University vice-chancellor Professor Peter Dawkins said the partnership with ISPT would help the university create "a world-class precinct" for its students in the CBD, while establishing an infrastructure fund to invest into its campuses in Melbourne's west The Victoria University project is the fourth development in Melbourne's CBD in which ISPT has a stake, including the new headquarters for Australian Unity it is developing on Spring Street ISPT also has a joint investment with Cbus Property in a $1.25-billion twin-tower project at 447 Collins Street and with Brookfield in an $800 million tower at 405 Bourke Street which is leased to NAB. An artist's impression of the new VU vertical campus, rising 32 storeys.

71 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: James Frost Section: General News Article type : Share Market Report Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,556 Words: 879 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Investors put heat on ASX over AMP Exclusive Shareholders including industry superannuation funds have written to the ASX in protest over the AMP'S controversial sale of its life insurance business. The Australian Financial Review understands that the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors is among those to have complained about the ASX ruling that the transaction did not meet the thresholds under Chapter 11 of the listing rules to trigger a shareholder vote. Companies pl3 Section Murray has 'no doubt' p17 Shareholders push ASX to delay AMP deal Exclusive James Frost The ASX has been drawn into the debate over AMP's controversial life insurance divestment after multiple shareholders, including a powerful industry fund representative, began lobbying the exchange to put the deal on ice. The Australian Financial Review understands that the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors - which represents a group of industry funds with more than $2.3 trillion in assets and owns roughly 10 per cent of every company on the ASX - is among those to have written to the ASX about the deal. A spokesperson for the ASX confirmed it had been approached by multiple parties about the proposed transaction and would carefully consider any new information that came to light The ASX has said the transaction did not meet the necessary thresholds under Chapter 11 of the listing rules to trigger a shareholder vote. ACSrs executive manager of governance, Edward John, declined to confirm whether the organisation had written to the ASX about the deal but said it was only fair for a company proposing a transformational deal to get shareholder approval before proceeding. "It is reasonable for investors to expect that company-changing transactions should require security holder approval. That"s what the ASX listing rules are there for," Mr John said. "We make no judgment of the value of the AMP Life proposal, ACSrs concern is a critical governance principle. The key question is - will the ASX apply the Listing Rules and allow shareholders to vote on this companytransforming transaction?" A spokesperson for AMP said the transaction was discussed with the exchange with specific reference to Chapter 11 before the announcement "The ASX confirmed that shareholder approval was not required for this transaction under chapter 11," the spokesperson said. Controversy over the transaction emerged last week when fundmanager-turned-activist Merlon Capital criticised the deal and the way AMP pitched it to shareholders in a letter where it described the deal as reckless, inept and value-destroying. AMP chairman David Murray appeared on ABC television last Thursday to defend the deal. He said it was completely unrealistic to put the deal to shareholders and said shareholders appoint directors to make those decisions for them. Allan Gray chief investment officer Simon Mawhinney threw his support behind the push for a shareholder vote over the weekend, saying he was against the transaction but would be comfortable with either outcome. "The AMP we own today is very different to the AMP we owned last week, its material. It's our company, not theirs and we should be allowed to vote," Mr Mawhinney said. Mr Mawhinney said he had some sympathy for the view that shareholders appoint the board to implement the strategy but "I don't know when this particular strategy was laid out, where is this document and when did we vote on that? If s just disappointing". He also said Continued p!7

72 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: James Frost Section: General News Article type : Share Market Report Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,556 Words: 879 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 From page 13 Shareholders push ASX to delay AMP deal that if the company felt obliged to convince shareholders of the merits of the deal then the "haphazard disclosure" and "unhelpful mudslinging" would have never occurred in the first place. Merlon Capital has engaged Arnold Bloch Leibler partner Jeremy Leibler to advise them on their attempts to scuttle the deal and put it to a vote. Mr Leibler said he is astounded by the chain of events and written to ASX chief compliance officer Kevin Lewis on Merlon's behalf and urged them to apply the listing rules. "The AMP board had an internal actuarial valuation of the business which was $2 billion more than what they propose to sell it for. It beggars belief that in the face of this, the board has proceeded without an independent expert's valuation to ensure that they are not depriving shareholders," he said. "David Murray has been appointed as Chairman to steer the company through difficult times following a traumatic royal commission where AMP and its board lost the confidence of its customers and its shareholders... clearly, the board has not learned the lessons of the royal commission." Mr Liebler argues that the ASX is obliged to apply listing rule 11 and put the transaction to shareholders because the assets being disposed represent the company's "main undertaking". The ASX generally applies a 50 per cent rule of thumb when assessing such transactions. He says that the divestment of the life business represents 50 per cent of shareholder equity, 92 per cent of net tangible equity, 86 per cent of annual revenue and 62 per cent of AMP's net profit after tax. Guidance note 12 of the ASX listing rules, however, state that when more than one transaction is announced they should be valued as a group, hi this instance, this would include the proposed IPO of AMFs New Zealand wealth operation, which has been conservatively valued at $400 million and would make the transaction even more significant. AMP has been meeting with institutional shareholders to try and shore up support for the deal following a massive rout in the share price. AMP shares recovered some ground last week after its critics attacked the board and speculation of a potential takeover emerged. Clearly, the board has not learned the lessons of the royal commission. Jeremy Leibler, Arnold Bloch Leibler partner AMP has been trying to shore up support. PHOTO: DARRIAN TRAYNOR

73 Daily Mercury, Mackay QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 7,207 Page: 14 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 458 Words: 462 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

74 News Mail, Bundaberg QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 6,176 Page: 33 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 223 Words: 434 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market kt correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

75 Queensland Times, Ipswich QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 6,256 Page: 16 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 222 Words: 435 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

76 Geelong Advertiser, Geelong VIC Author: Stephen Drill Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 16,687 Page: 9 Printed Size: cm² Region: VIC Market: Australia ASR: AUD 897 Words: 504 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Ex-judge: UFU bid not in community s interest State paying for fire fight STEPHEN DRILL THE former judge who led the Black Saturday Bushfires Royal Commission says Victoria is suffering from Premier Daniel Andrews s bid to keep peace with the United Firefighters Union. As Victoria heads toward a state election and a potentially disastrous bushfire season, Bernard Teague said the UFU s ongoing push to increase its control over the state s fire services was not in the best interests of the community. In his first major public comments since the Royal Commission, Mr Teague told News Corp: (The UFU s) only negotiating position is let us take over, and that can t work. (UFU boss) Peter Marshall is so obviously intent on doing what s best for his members but in a way that effectively, from my perspective, just means that the interests of the community suffer, Mr Teague said. Daniel Andrews has had to pay and will continue to pay for the position that is taken by the UFU but it comes at a cost to the community. I don t know how you deal with it, when you have got a situation with Peter Marshall that is effectively not negotiable, it s hard to see anything other than problems arising on these kinds of Black Saturday days. Mr Teague, who was appointed chairman by Labor premier John Brumby to prevent Black Saturday from happening again, raised concerns over the dispute, which has dominated state politics since It comes as Victoria heads into what could be one of the worst bushfire seasons since Black Saturday. The fire services dispute ignited in 2016, when Mr Andrews ed a controversial workplace agreement for paid CFA firefighters, despite fears it would hand the UFU broad veto powers over management decisions. Former emergency services minister Jane Garrett resigned after she refused to sign the deal, and the CFA s chief executive, chief fire officer and its entire board were forced out. It is now 873 days since Mr Andrews said: This dispute had to come to an end and I ended it. But the dispute has continued to boil away, with workplace agreements for the CFA and MFB remaining unsigned and a continuing exodus of fire services leaders. The government drew up plans to restructure the fire services, putting all paid firefighters in a new agency and leaving only volunteers in the CFA. The reforms were blocked in parliament but Mr Andrews said yesterday he was committed to the changes if re-elected. Mr Teague s commission handed down 67 recommendations in July 2010, and he later became a CFA volunteer. He said changes to warning systems had been the biggest achievement, with the previous stay or go policy ditched for the leave early and live strategy. Mr Teague said he understood changes to planning laws had made building new dwellings more difficult in bushfire prone areas. And he said upgrades to power lines were expensive and difficult to do. A 5 per cent controlled burning target, recommended by the commission, was revised to target more high-risk areas in recent years.

77 Gladstone Observer, Gladstone QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 3,301 Page: 33 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 223 Words: 434 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. t Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highth ti growth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

78 Cairns Post, Cairns Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 13,896 Page: 43 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 1,289 Words: 439 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

79 West Australian, Perth Section: Today Article type : Review Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 4 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 10,274 Words: 562 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Leppard love still bites CONCERT Def Leppard RAC Arena REVIEW AMANDA KEENAN 4.5 There ain t nothing wrong with a little middle-aged Hysteria. The Def Leppard album is now 31 years old and its original fans are a good decade older at least. But do they go off! I see your teenager at Tay Tay and raise you a 44-year-old who pumped a cassette version of the Thriller of rock into her ears at unhealthy decibels through the dodgy foam headphones of a Sony Walkman and even bought Love Bites as a 12-inch single (do you even know what a 12-inch single is?). I ll show you Hysteria. The pasty lads from Sheffield, who perfected a superior form of theatrical cock rock, put on an arena show of old on Friday night: loud, indulgent, wildly lit, raunchy, poignant and utterly addictive all a timely reminder that life is short, gigs are great. Even though this could be classified as a superannuation tour given the fellas are pushing 60, this was no substandard cringe fest. Frontman Joe Elliott s voice troubles barely bothered him as he belted his way through Hysteria in order, the songs sounding just as they do on the album, if better. And so it was that Women ( women, women, lots of pretty women! ) opened the show, as it did the record (it was also the first single in some parts of the world). Hysteria is reputedly the most expensive album ever recorded in the UK, plagued as it was by all kinds of problems and delays not least of which was drummer Rick Allen losing an arm in a car crash. The big screen showed plenty of shots of a pleased-looking Allen, his ears covered by big industrial headphones emblazoned with the Union Jack, as he pounded away in style. These were moments to celebrate his grit and talent, and the band mates who refused to give up on him. Elliott et al, including the breathtakingly buff guitarist Phil Collen, ploughed through the slick set with fervour, including the anthemic Rocket and the aforementioned Love Bites, which began life as a country song before it got well and truly Lepparded. Mega-hit Pour Some Sugar on Me had

80 West Australian, Perth Section: Today Article type : Review Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 4 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 10,274 Words: 562 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 the capacity crowd on the kind of high that would horrify Sarah Wilson. You cannot quit sugar. There was a tender tribute to guitarist Steve Clark, who played on Hysteria before he died in 1991 at just 30 years of age, and archival footage of the glory days ( when their debauched and under-stage parties became stuff of legend) played as they carved up the album s title track. The Defs rounded out the two-hour show with a best of, including Let s Get Rocked, which had the woo girls on song, and the vintage classic Photograph. The headliners were served extremely well by German rock gods Scorpions. The distinctive voice of 70-year-old singer Klaus Meine has lost none of its power. Plenty of punters turned up early to hear jukebox favourites such as Winds of Change and the charming Meine, surrounded by an eager and calisthenic band, tossed a seemingly endless supply of drumsticks into the crowd (a roadie even refilled his mic-side stick stash mid gig). Plenty of fans brought their young kids, who can now brag that they got bitten by Def Leppard. German rock gods Scorpions opened. Pictures: Jay Wennington/Live Nation

81 Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 9,376 Page: 27 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 273 Words: 435 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

82 Sunshine Coast Daily, Maroochydore QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 10,046 Page: 39 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 345 Words: 476 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

83 Sunshine Coast Daily, Maroochydore QLD Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 10,046 Page: 39 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 948 Words: 849 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 Why we re a global wonder High praise for the Australian economy shows negative sentiment unjustified THIS is the most hated period of economic prosperity in Australian history. It has become un-australian to acknowledge anything we do well and it infuriates us. We have previously written about our personal Campaign For Optimism to try and break this destructive negativity. It s not good for the economy, for business or for the average Australian when the reality is quite positive. So we welcome to our campaign the world s most prestigious economics and finance magazine, The Economist. Based in London, this is the magazine read by the world s most powerful politicians, bankers and business chiefs. Last week s cover story of The Economist was Aussie Rules what Australia can teach the world. Inside the magazine is a 12- page report on Australia, which it dubs the wonder down under. It s a clinical, objective outsider s expert assessment of how we are going as a nation the conclusion is we re going pretty bloody well. The only people who don t realise it is us. Its economy is arguably the most successful in the rich world, states the magazine s editorial. It has been growing for 27 years without a recession a record for a developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period is almost three times what Germany has managed. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41 per cent of GDP, is less that half Britain s. Its assessment is vastly different to the common scaremongering from conservative politicians and media. Our Government debt is way below even Germany (64 per cent of its GDP), Canada (90 per cent and it s a similarsized economy as ours) or Japan (an incredible 238 per cent). VISIONARY CALLS So, how did we get to this enviable position? The Economist puts it down to a couple of landmark decisions, some of which were made 30 years ago, including: Paul Keating and Bob Hawke floating the Australian dollar, abolishing import quotas, slashing tariffs, overhauling the tax code and shifting a centralised wage accord to enterprise bargaining. Keating introducing compulsory super. Medicare. John Howard s macro-economic management to deliver budget surpluses in eight out of 11 years. Kevin Rudd s fiscal stimulus to fight the Global Financial Crisis, including his $900 handouts. All of these changes received a huge amount of criticism, but these political architects who cover both sides of politics had the vision to do what was right for the country rather than their own popularity. The Economist claims these decisions have been what has made this country great and resulted in the current period of prosperity. They are also in awe of our immigration policy, and our acceptance of it, which allows three times as many newcomers, relative to population, as America. Over 28 per cent of our population

84 Sunshine Coast Daily, Maroochydore QLD Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 10,046 Page: 39 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 948 Words: 849 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 was born overseas and half were either born abroad or are the child of someone who was. The immigrants are also young, which gives Australia a median age well below that of most European countries. IN A GREAT SPOT Our geographic location has also been working in our favour. Being on the edge of the region which is fast becoming the new economic engine of the globe has been an enormous boost for our trade. It s not just the also access to first world medical, education and aged care. Going forward, our crucial ties to Asia will provide a tricky political environment as we try and stay friends with both our biggest trading partner as well as our oldest ally while they re feuding with each other. leaders used in the past. But they warn Australian voters are becoming disenchanted with the effectiveness of Government. This is forcing politicians to become increasingly febrile in order to gain popularity, rather than do what s right for the country. In other words, we re killing the golden goose because we re losing the sense of what makes us great: vision and decisiveness. We love the conclusion, and the implied challenge, from The Economist: Ambitious reforms have become rare. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Australia and Australians could do with a refresher course. WE CAN IMPROVE We all know that while we live in a remarkable country, we can do better in a whole lot of areas. The Economist highlights our failure to solve the enormous disadvantages suffered by Aborigines; how we suffer ongoing droughts but do so little to fight climate change; questions why we allowed superannuation fee rip-offs for so long; and can t understand our treatment of illegal immigrants. The magazine calls for today s politicians to come up with solutions to these problems using the same decisive thinking that our

85 Sunshine Coast Daily, Maroochydore QLD Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 10,046 Page: 39 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 948 Words: 849 Item ID: Page 3 of 3

86 West Australian, Perth Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 7 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 13,096 Words: 680 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 Resolve handover of super powers Who will manage your DIY fund when you can t? with Monica Rule There are two questions that I am commonly asked by selfmanaged superannuation fund trustees and neither relates to a pleasant time of life. The first question is who can manage your DIY super fund when you re no longer able to do itself. And the other big question is what they can do to make sure their superannuation goes to the right people when they die. Normally, these clients are members of a single member SMSF or a husband and wife in a two-member SMSF. This means they are the main decision maker for their SMSF. Under superannuation law, an SMSF is a private superannuation fund where all members are individual trustees or directors of the corporate trustee. If a member is unable to manage their SMSF, they can no longer act as a trustee or director of a corporate trustee and therefore the SMSF will not comply with the legal structure under the law. Although the law allows six months for an SMSF to restructure, someone still needs to make decisions during this period. So, what options are there for an SMSF member if they can no longer manage their fund because of mental incapacity or death? One option is an enduring power of attorney. However, if there is no enduring power of attorney in place prior to a member losing their mental capacity, then the only option is for someone to approach the State Administrative Tribunal for either an administrator or a financial manager to be appointed. This may be time consuming and stressful for loved ones to have to go through this process. SMSF members should also consider putting in place a binding death benefit nomination. A binding death benefit nomination is a legal document that requires the remaining SMSF trustee to pay the deceased member s superannuation to the person nominated by the deceased. Without a binding nomination, a member cannot be certain that their super will go to people they intend. The Government proposal to increase the maximum number of SMSF members from four to six may assist with some of these issues. It means there will be other members in the SMSF who can hold an enduring power of attorney for an incapacitated member. However, with more people making

87 West Australian, Perth Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 7 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 13,096 Words: 680 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 decisions for an SMSF, it may create greater risk. There is also the potential for children to use their numbers to outvote their parents if a dispute arises. Members may also be in different stages of their lives so may not agree on mutually beneficial investment strategies. SMSFs with bigger numbers of members will need to have a trust deed with solid dispute-resolution mechanisms to resolve conflict among members. If SMSF members no longer wish to manage their fund, they could consider converting their SMSF to a Small Australian Prudential Regulation Fund where a professional licensed trustee is responsible for managing the fund. There is also the option for members to roll their super into a retail or industry super fund prior to winding up their SMSF. If you have an SMSF, planning for your incapacity or death should be something that you resolve very early on in the life of your SMSF. Failure to do so could leave your family with a legacy you never intended. IF YOU HAVE AN SMSF, PLANNING FOR YOUR INCAPACITY OR DEATH SHOULD BE SOMETHING THAT YOU RESOLVE VERY EARLY ON IN THE LIFE OF YOUR SMSF. Monica Rule is the author of The Self Managed Super Handbook Superannuation Law for SMSFs in plain English. monicarule.com.au

88 West Australian, Perth Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 7 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 13,096 Words: 680 Item ID: Page 3 of 3 ENDURING POWER OF ATTORNEY An enduring power of attorney is a legal document allowing a member to give a trusted person authority to make decisions for their SMSF. If the member is unable to act as a trustee or a director, their attorney can act in their place. The attorney assumes the duties, responsibilities and obligations of an SMSF trustee. The attorney will be subject to civil and criminal penalties for any contravention of the superannuation law.

89 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 8 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 6,206 Words: 532 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 FPA ain t dreaming if it turfs out the big boys Neale Prior Tell em they re dreamin! These words misquoted from the great Australian movie The Castle entered my mind on Thursday on learning the Financial Planning Association wants to a key role in the future regulation of its industry. The FPA revealed it had applied for a formal role overseeing new education and ethics standards being established by Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority. It has even set up a new company that it hopes will run a compliance scheme for FPA members and non-members alike. FPA boss Dante De Gori said in a media release that planners and clients could operate under a professional scheme rather than than a more expensive commercial alternative which may not bring the depth of understanding of the various business models in the marketplace. The bid comes as the industry battles to come to grips with new rules still being put together by FASEA and all the negative revelations from the financial services royal commission. The royal commission will convene again in a fortnight to focus on the policy implications of its earlier hearings, which included Mr De Gori being grilled over the handling of a complaint against celebrity planner Sam Henderson. In an interim report, Commissioner Kenneth Hayne said the FPA s handling of the Henderson complaint was directed more to settling an agreed outcome to the complaint than imposing proper standards of conduct by members. Mr Hayne wrote the affair did not encourage great confidence in FPA s disciplinary arrangements, at least as they stood when the commission took evidence about the matter. He said the key functions of the FPA and its rival Association of Financial Advisers in promoting their profession sat uncomfortably with those of effective discipline that include objectivity, consistency and compulsion. Now all this got me wondering what the FPA had done to improve its disciplinary arrangements since Mr De Gori was put through the ringer in April by Mr Hayne s formidable counsel assisting Rowena Orr. We raised a series of issues with the FPA media advisers about its proposal, but Mr De Gori was apparently uncontactable. He s doubtless working tirelessly behind the scenes to justify the FPA being given a role in monitoring standards, but he faces structural obstacles.. Despite having thousands of true professionals among its members, the FPA s professional partner program and other activities cultivate close relationships with financial giants. Unfairly for many planners, trust has been damaged by these companies setting up business models to flog their products. The FPA must end its long-time infiltration by the big institutions if it is to be seen as a true professional body. Only as a genuine professional body can it be entrusted with overseeing new rules aimed at restoring all the lost trust. THE DREAM Groups hoping to have a role monitoring new higher education and ethics rules had until Halloween to lodge expressions of interest with regulators. The Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority is still fleshing out Federal rules requiring all financial planners to have a university degree or equivalent by By 2020, all financial planners who give advice to retail clients will have to comply with a code of ethics and be covered by a monitoring scheme.

90 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 8 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 6,206 Words: 532 Item ID: Page 2 of 2

91 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 4 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 25,666 Words: 633 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Guesswork for retirees in Bill s firing line Tough decisions loom amid political wrangling Neale Prior Like tens of thousands of other self-funded Australian retirees living off share dividends and franking credits, Richard Gould faces a dilemma over the next eight months. Given Labor is likely to win office from an error-prone coalition before the end of May, does he sell out of his self-managed superannuation fund and put his money into a retail or industry fund? Or does he hang on to his share portfolio in the hope that crossbench senators can be persuaded to block Labor s proposal to stop refunds of franking credits? This is not some abstract discussion of politics for Mr Gould. They re issues that continually occupy his mind. Do we panic and change now, he said. They say you can wait until next year but the franking credits start to disappear from July 1. Labor says its policy will apply from July 1 but will only affect future earnings and franked dividends that start to flow the following year. It is considered unlikely Labor will control the Senate even if it wins power in the first half of And even if Labor eventually gets its way, a tax hit Bill might not pass Parliament for many months. Given the political uncertainty and timing issues, it is unclear whether the changes might in fact have an effect on the post-refund value of dividends. Fellow self-funded retiree Rick Morgan said the franking credits were an important part of his annual budgeting but he was unsure what would be allowed once Labor won power. While he was financially comfortable, Mr Morgan said his franking credits helped pay the $15,000 annual strata fees on his apartment and some big private medical bills he faced. We will have to reduce our standard of living, he said. Even if we restructure, we will not get the same yield we re getting now. No matter what happens, you will never be the same. Retired lawyer and financial counsellor Janet Simpson must make a big decision based on political guesswork. She has only four months before she turns 75 and can no longer contribute to super. She needs to work out whether she should sell her holding of bank shares from which she currently collects about $10,000 a year of franking credits. She would have to pay capital gains tax if she sold her shares but she could put the net proceeds in a super fund that provided her the benefits of franking credits. I have got to decide this before the election is held it s a Catch-22 all around, she said. With self-managed super funds and involvement in the Association for Independent Retirees, the retirees who spoke to Your Money are very aware that they may face some tough choices. But Mr Morgan said many seniors he spoke to were unaware they were potentially in the firing line of Labor s policy. The Alliance for a Fairer Retirement System said 50 out of the 240 big super funds regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority had received annual refundable franking credits. Super funds with a heavy weighting of members in accumulation phase completely use franking credits. Funds with a high rate of members in retirement mode do not use all their franking credits and claim cash refunds. SMSF Association chair Deborah Ralston said retired smallbusiness owners who lived off the dividend and franking creditors were also likely to be hit. The potential changes had created uncertainty. People really need to be able to plan for the longer term, Professor Ralston said.

92 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 4 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 25,666 Words: 633 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 Seniors rights campaigner Ian Henschke, of National Seniors Australia, with Parliamentary inquiry head Tim Wilson Retirees are facing some tough choices. Retiree Rick Morgan. SMSF investor Richard Gould. Fund manager Geoff Wilson and SMSF Association chief John Maroney SMSF Association chair Deborah Ralston. Pictures: Jan Kuczerawy Attendees at the Alliance for a Fairer Retirement launch in Sydney.

93 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 4 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,926 Words: 496 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 ALP plan about as sexy as fire hydrant possie Neale Prior A bit like Karl Marx s Communist Manifesto and Vatsyayana s Kama Sutra, Labor s policy to abolish cash refunds on franking credits is appealing on paper but really tough to apply. The original extension of franking credits in 2001 to allow cash refunds for unused credits was a Howard-era indulgence when Federal Treasury was flush with tax receipts and privatisation proceeds. We are now living in a very different world where Federal Governments are struggling to balance budgets and to bankroll the programs we expect. Labor s policy was supposedly to save $5 billion over four years with Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen s claiming that 50 per cent of the refunds go to the top 10 per cent of self-managed super funds. Yet even before it was unveiled, the $5 billion annual savings target wasn t some fiscal equivalent of the Kama Sutra s attainable glowing triangle position, but was about as achievable as the fire hydrant position. You see, the coalition had already tapped into the savings by pinching a good Labor policy and imposing a $1.6 million cap on the super balances that a person could keep in tax-free retirement phase. Hence high-balance SMSFs now face tax bills and will be able to use their franking credits to offset tax now payable on an individual s balance above $1.6 million. And any modestly wealthy SMSF and half-smart operator with a close family will make sure they have younger relatives in the super fund to use the tax credits on which they may no longer be able to claim a refund. Realising other problems with its policy, Labor did the right thing in late March by exempting franking credits directly received by age pensioners from the cash ban. And it did the half-right thing by allowing franking credit cash refunds to be claimed by SMSFs who had someone as an age pension recipient as at March 28. All other SMSFs will be refused cash refunds, something that is likely to hit everyone from a new pensioner with a modest SMSF all the way through to a retiree with $1.6 million in retirement mode and $700,000 in taxed accumulation mode. Rather than hitting the rich, it will have the biggest impact on retirees with SMSFs who missed out on the March 28 pensioner grandfathering and on retirees

94 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 4 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,926 Words: 496 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 whose direct holdings in shares make them just miss out on the age pension. The changes will smash the budgets of homeowner couples with Centrelink-assessable assets exceeding $848,000 and who rely on franking credit refunds. A couple that has most of their money in shares and just misses out on the age pension could lose up to $13,000 in franking credit refunds each year, potentially slicing their annual usable cash by more than a quarter. The changes will also likely hit couples with about $1 million in shares, but they will be in the zone where they start having to pay tax and therefore are able to use at least some of the franking credits.

95 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : Share Market Report Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,731 Words: 609 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Blow bucks to beat Bill s Bill Neale Prior Retirees could have 250,000 extra reasons to blow part of their nest egg if Labor wins power in Canberra next year and gets plans to slash franking credit refunds through the Senate. That is the message that has been given to senior Australians worried about the impact of tax changes that threaten the retirement strategies of people who just miss out on the age pension or have a self-managed superannuation fund. Investors and investment groups are getting together under the banner Australians for a Fairer Retirement System to fight Labor s plans to slash cash refunds of unused franking credits accompanying share dividends. The original proposals unveiled in March universally banned cash refunds of unused franking credits but a public lash forced Labor to promise to allow people eligible for the aged pension to continue claiming cash refunds on directly held shares. It also provided a little mercy to self-managed super funds by conditionally continuing to allow SMSFs with a member who was a pensioner on March 28 this year to continue claiming cash refunds. Many retirees have built their retirement plans and their annual budgets around cash refunds on franking credits they might receive directly or through the SMSF. Opponents of the proposal argue that extremely wealthy retirees will potentially be less affected by the changes than people who just miss out on the age pension. Single retirees with less than about $564,000 of assessable assets generally qualify for a part age pension, which involves a fortnightly payment to a single person totalling about $1300 annually and $1980 annually for a couple. Fund manager Don Hamson said a single retiree with $800,000 of assessable assets could have a massive incentive to spend $250,000 so they qualified for a partpension and for refunds on their share franking credits. Mr Hamson said his late mother had about $500,000 in shares and $100,000 in cash and would have seen her income fall from around $30,000 to $22,000 under the Labor plan because of her lost franking credits. She d get all the franking credits, get a little bit of pension and get close to the $30,000 just by spending $50,000, he said. Calculations based on current pension rates and the 5.6 per cent gross dividend yield of popular share fund Australian Foundation Investment Company support Mr Hamson s claims about damage to retirees who just miss the pension. A single person with $550,000 of shares and $100,000 of other investments could expect their disposable income to fall from about $32,800 to below $24,000 under Labor s plans to take away franking credit refunds for non-pensioners. Due to offsets, single retirees do not usually face income tax until taxable income gets to about $33,000, while members of a couple generally do not face tax bills until taxable income tops $29,600. The most impact is likely to be felt by single seniors with $540,000 to $800,000 of financial assets. Couples with $800,000 to $1.1 million of assets could hit hardest.

96 West Australian, Perth Author: Neale Prior Section: Your Money Article type : Share Market Report Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 8,731 Words: 609 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 SMACK IN THE MIDDLE Single retiree with shares yielding 5.6%, $100,000 in bank earning 2% and $20,000 of non-financial assets Share value Disposable income now (inc. unused franking credit refunds) Unused franking credits Disposable income under Labor $300,000 $30,065 $5040 $30,065 $350,000 $28,952 $5880 $28,952 $400,000 $27,839 $6720 $27,839 $440,000 $28,515 $7560 $28,515 $450,000 $27,200 $7560 $19,640 $500,000 $30,000 $8400 $21,600 $550,000 $32,800 $9240 $23,560 $600,000 $34,670 $9150 $25,520 $700,000 $37,442 $8002 $29,440 $800,000 $40,314 $6954 $33,360 $1,000,000 $47,103 $5903 $41,200 Receives part-pension, continues to receive unused credit refund No pension, loses cash refunds on credits No pension, loses cash refunds on credits not used to reduce tax bill SOURCE: CENTRELINK FIGURES, TAXCALC.COM.AU Bill Shorten

97 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Phillip Coorey Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 6,088 Words: 644 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 APRA's Byres gets another five years Exclusive The Morrison government is shoring up the banking regulator ahead of potentially sharp scrutiny from the royal commission by bringing forward the appoint- Wayn ment of Wayne Byres to a second five-year term as head of the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority and giving the agency an extra $60 million. Mr Byres was appointed in 2014 by the Abbott government and his term is not due to expire until July next year. Newsp3 Comment Best man for the job p3 e Byres APRA's Byres gets another term and $60m Exclusive Phillip Coorey Political editor The Morrison government is shoring up the banking regulatior ahead of potentially sharp scrutiny from the royal commission by bringing forward the appointment of Wayne Byers to a second five-year term as head of the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority and giving the agency an extra $60 million. Mr Byres was appointed in 2014 by the Abbott government and his term is not due to expire until July next year. By announcing his reappointment now, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is locking in Mr Byres in the event Labor wins the federal election, which is due by mid-may at the latest Labor was set to reappoint Mr Byres if it won but will be upset that the government has brought forward the announcement, as it did recently with the reappointment of ACCC boss Rod Sims. The prudential regulator is reviewing its own performance in the wake of criticism by the banking royal commission of its failure to enforce laws. Mr Frydenberg said in a statement that Mr Byres' early reappointment was "important for stability during this time of reform". "In addition to pursuing a broad agenda to build resilience across the industries it supervises, APRA has been undertaking careful and targeted interventions in the housing market and implementing the new Banking Executive Accountability Regime [BEAR]," he said. The additional funding of $58.7 million will be spread over four years and be used to boost the regulator's ability to do its job, including the identification of new and emerging risk areas such as cyber and fintech. It will also be used to fund APRA's review of its enforcement strategy and the better use of its enforcement powers. The funding will be used to improve data collection so it can co-

98 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: Phillip Coorey Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 1 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 6,088 Words: 644 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 operate better with other agencies, and to employ extra supervisors. The interim report of the Hayne commission was far more scathing of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's failures to stop bad behaviour in the financial services sector but APRA also came in for criticism. Commissioner Kenneth Hayne said there was no point introducing new laws against misconduct when the current ones were not being enforced. Mr Byres told a Senate Estimates hearing last month his new deputy John Lonsdale would conduct the review of APRA's enforcement policies, such as utilising court-based sanctions. Mr Lonsdale told the hearing: "That would bring more individual accountability, more accountability at the entity level and more general deterrence." APRA has traditionally avoided court proceedings against financial institutions and bankers, preferring to focus on remedying problems through cooperation. Mr Byres also said remuneration and incentives at financial institutions would face further scrutiny. "Being a prudential regulator, we have traditionally focused on the potential for poor incentives to impact on the long-term financial soundness of the financial institution," Mr Byres said at a Senate estimates hearing. Mr Frydenberg"s announcement is designed to get ahead of the final report of the royal commission, which is due by February 1. The government has already boosted ASICs funding by $70 million but this follows almost $200 million in cuts since the Coalition came to power in Labor is angry Phil Gaetjens, the former chief of staff to Scott Morrison, was appointed Treasury secretary and has threatened to end his tenure if it wins the next election. Key points Josh Frydenberg said the early reappointment was important for stability. The regulator is reviewing its own performance after the royal commission.

99 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: John Kehoe Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 3 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 7,686 Words: 516 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Best man to head up bank regulator Comment John Kehoe Wayne Byres is a world-class bank supervisor. At a time of falling house prices and financial institutions overhauling their business models in response to the royal commission, he is widely considered the best person to lead the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. APRA's chief responsibility is to protect depositors and insurance and superannuation policy-holders from institution collapses, while working with the Reserve Bank of Australia to maintain financial stability. Measured against this benchmark Byres has done a good job over the past 4V2 years. He will have learntvaluable lessons from the commission uncovering misconduct by financiers, though this is generally more the responsibility of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has made a sound decision entrusting Byres for another five years with the helm of APRA. As an APRA deputy, Byres helped shepherd local banks through the 2008 financial crisis and won plaudits from Labor's thentreasurer Wayne Swan. Byres faces a delicate balancing act in considering royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne's suggestion that APRA take more vigorous enforcement actions against recalcitrant banks. The prudential regulator has typically eschewed taking financial institutions and financiers to court APRA has preferred a quieter, behind-the-scenes coaxing, such as more intense supervision of the offending institution, giving bank chief risk officers more power, requesting a bank hire extra risk staff or forcing an institution to hold more capital. For example, Commonwealth Bank of Australia in May was told to hold an extra $1 billion in regulatory capital after a scathing APRA-commissioned report led by former regulator John Laker, who found widespread complacency, overconfidence, excessive complexity and insularity. The risk in APRA being more prosecutorial is that it could discourage financiers from raising red flags with the regulator. Issues could be left to fester into bigger problems. A veteran banker who has dealt with Byres for many years says: "If you're talking to an enforcement agency there is a risk they are going to pursue you legally, so you don't raise things with them. With the prudential regulator you're more likely to raise things early and give them a heads-up." Byres' new deputy, John Lonsdale, has been chargfed with reviewing APRA's enforcement policies. The Coalition government"s new Banking Executive Accountability Regime, which took effect in July for the largest banks, gives APRA new teeth to hold bank directors and senior executives accountable. Importantly, Byres is respected but not universally loved by the bankers he regulates. Crucially, as the RBA's record-low interest rates pumped up house prices in Sydney and Melbourne, Byres has clamped down on interest-only and investor loans for residential property. So far the APRA and ex-rba official, who began his regulatory career in 1984, has engineered a relatively soft landing in house prices. Managing these "macroprudential tools" as the housing market cools will require a deft touch, especially as the commission risks crimping credit to home buyers and small business. Nobody is more experienced to navigate today's storm clouds. Byres has done a good job over the past 4V2 years.

100 Australian Financial Review, Australia Author: John Kehoe Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : National : 44,635 Page: 3 Printed Size: cm² Region: National Market: Australia ASR: AUD 7,686 Words: 516 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 Wayne Byres, right, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg: respected but not universally loved by bankers. PHOTO: AAP

101 Townsville Bulletin, Townsville QLD Author: David Libby Koch Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 16,484 Page: 19 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,527 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 1 of 3 David & Libby Why we re a global wonder High praise for the Australian economy shows negative sentiment unjustified THIS is the most hated period of economic prosperity in Australian history. It has become un-australian to acknowledge anything we do well and it infuriates us. We have previously written about our personal Campaign For Optimism to try and break this destructive negativity. It s not good for the economy, for business or for the average Australian when the reality is quite positive. So we welcome to our campaign the world s most prestigious economics and finance magazine, The Economist. Based in London, this is the magazine read by the world s most powerful politicians, bankers and business chiefs. Last week s cover story of The Economist was Aussie Rules what Australia can teach the world. Inside the magazine is a 12- page report on Australia, which it dubs the wonder down under. It s a clinical, objective outsider s expert assessment of how we are going as a nation the conclusion is we re going pretty bloody well. The only people who don t realise it is us. Its economy is arguably the most successful in the rich world, states the magazine s editorial. It has been growing for 27 years without a recession a record for a developed country. Its cumulative growth over that period is almost three times what Germany has managed. The median income has risen four times faster than in America. Public debt, at 41 per cent of GDP, is less that half Britain s. Its assessment is vastly different to the common scaremongering from conservative politicians and media. Our Government debt is way below even Germany (64 per cent of its GDP), Canada (90 per cent and it s a similarsized economy as ours) or Japan (an incredible 238 per cent). VISIONARY CALLS So, how did we get to this enviable position? The Economist puts it down to a couple of landmark decisions, some of which were made 30 years ago, including: Paul Keating and Bob Hawke floating the Australian dollar, abolishing import quotas, slashing tariffs, overhauling the tax code and shifting a centralised wage accord to enterprise bargaining. Keating introducing compulsory super. Medicare. John Howard s macro-economic management to deliver budget surpluses in eight out of 11 years. Kevin Rudd s fiscal and decisiveness. We love the conclusion, and the implied challenge, from The Economist: Ambitious reforms have become rare. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Australia and Australians could do with a refresher course. stimulus to fight the Global Financial Crisis, including his $900 handouts. All of these changes received a huge amount of criticism, but these political architects who cover both sides of politics had the vision to do what was right for the country rather than their own popularity. The Economist claims these decisions have been what has made this country great and resulted in the current period of prosperity. They are also in awe of our immigration policy, and our acceptance of it, which allows three times as many newcomers, relative to population, as America. Over 28 per cent of our population was born overseas and half were either born abroad or are the child of someone who was. The immigrants are also young, which gives Australia a median age well below that of most European countries. IN A GREAT SPOT Our geographic location has also been working in our favour. Being on the edge of the region which is fast becoming the new economic engine of the globe has been an enormous boost for our trade. It s not just the traditional mining and agriculture sectors which have benefited from trade with Asia. It has also allowed us to diversify our economy to a point where tourism is our third biggest export, while education is in the top five. Plus our services sector is riding the burgeoning development of a middle class across Asia which not only wants luxury brand material goods, but also access to first world medical, education and aged care. Going forward, our crucial ties to Asia will provide a tricky political environment as we try and stay friends with both our biggest trading partner as well as our oldest ally while they re feuding with each other.

102 Townsville Bulletin, Townsville QLD Author: David Libby Koch Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 16,484 Page: 19 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,527 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 2 of 3 WE CAN IMPROVE We all know that while we live in a remarkable country, we can do better in a whole lot of areas. The Economist highlights our failure to solve the enormous disadvantages suffered by Aborigines; how we suffer ongoing droughts but do so little to fight climate change; questions why we allowed superannuation fee rip-offs for so long; and can t understand our treatment of illegal immigrants. The magazine calls for today s politicians to come up with solutions to these problems using the same decisive thinking that our leaders used in the past. But they warn Australian voters are becoming disenchanted with the effectiveness of Government. This is forcing politicians to become increasingly febrile in order to gain popularity, rather than do what s right for the country. In other words, we re killing the golden goose because we re losing the sense of what makes us great: vision

103 Townsville Bulletin, Townsville QLD Author: David Libby Koch Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 16,484 Page: 19 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 4,527 Words: 847 Item ID: Page 3 of 3

104 Townsville Bulletin, Townsville QLD Author: Anthony Keane Section: General News Article type : News Item Classification : Regional : 16,484 Page: 19 Printed Size: cm² Region: QLD Market: Australia ASR: AUD 1,651 Words: 474 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 When balanced super tips too far to riskier side ANTHONY KEANE VOLATILE financial markets are set to pressure Aussie savers to question just how risky their superannuation fund s balanced investment option is. Big variations in asset mixes within funds will cause some members to worry about what s in their nest egg. A majority of workers super is in default balanced funds, which official figures show comprise an average 70 per cent growth assets, such as shares and property, and 30 per cent defensive assets, such as cash and bonds. However, Marinis Financial Group managing director Theo Marinis said some balanced funds were a wolf in sheep s clothing because they comprised up to 90 per cent growth assets. Any link with a balanced fund profile is tenuous, he said. A large market correction would result in massive underperformance by so-called balanced funds that were really growth funds, Mr Marinis said, so members needed to know just how their money was invested. We re five months into the financial year and the nation s biggest balanced super funds have a negative year-to-date investment return after sharp falls in shares. Their highgrowth options have fallen further, and even their conservative investment options are negative, hit by low interest rates. Rainmaker Information, the research group behind the SelectingSuper fund comparison service, defines a balanced portfolio as having between 55 and 75 per cent in growth assets. Its executive director of research, Alex Dunnin, said there were several definitions of balanced but none were universally accepted. Yes, the term is very confusing. But before we get too excited, the issue only matters if you re trying to compare funds or decompose why they did well or didn t, he said. Many people did not care too much about the term balanced, Mr Dunnin said, and simply wanted their fund to invest for good long-term returns without taking on excessive risks. Recently, some people in superannuation have been saying balanced funds should be a 50:50 mix between growth and defensive assets, but that would make for very conservative portfolios. Mr Marinis said the Productivity Commission should set rules to define investment profiles, such as balanced, conservative and high growth. The potential for people to rely on terms which are fundamentally misleading should be removed, he said. But Mr Dunnin said national rules were unlikely. If we can t agree on the formal definition of what a free-range egg is, how will we be able to define what a balanced portfolio is? HOW DEFAULT SUPER FUNDS INVEST Aussie shares... 21% International shares... 29% Property... 9% Infrastructure... 7% Fixed interest... 20% Cash... 6% Other... 8% Source: APRA MySuper data

105 West Australian, Perth Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 2 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 15,638 Words: 615 Item ID: Page 1 of 1 Numbers you need to know TAX RATES 0 to $18,200 Nil $18,201 $37, for each $1 over $18,200 $37,001 $90,000 $3572 plus 32.5 for each $1 over $37,000 $90,001 $180,000 $20,797 plus 37 for each $1 over $90,000 $180,001 and over $54,097 plus 45 for each $1 over $180,000 Tax rates exclude Medicare levy of 2% and potential benefits of Seniors and Pensioners Tax Offset SUPERANNUATION CONTRIBUTIONS Age Can I contribute? Under 65 Yes Must have been gainfully employed for 40 hours within 30 consecutive days during the financial year the contribution is made. 75+ No (unless mandated employer contribution) CONCESSIONAL CONTRIBUTION LIMIT $25,000 each financial year NON-CONCESSIONAL CONTRIBUTION LIMIT $100,000 each financial year $300,000 over three years if triggering bring-forward rule AGE PENSION ASSETS TEST Cuts age pension $3 a fortnight for every $1000 above threshold Test threshold Pension cuts out Single homeowner $258,500 $564,000 Single non-homeowner $465,500 $771,000 Couple homeowners $387,500 $848,000 Couple non-homeowers $594,500 $1,055,000 Born before July 1, July 1, 1962-June 30, July 1, 1960-June 30, July 1, 1963-June 30, July 1, 1961-June 30, After June 30, AGE PENSION INCOME TEST HOW MUCH FORTNIGHTLY PENSION YOU GET SINGLE HOMEOWNER COUPLE HOMEOWNERS Total assessable assets Including $10,000 of non-financial assets Including $20,000 of non-financial assets Including $50,000 of non-financial assets ACCOUNT-BASED PENSION MINIMUM DRAWDOWN Under 65: 4% 85-89: 9% Drawdown percentage of July : 5% 90-94%: 11% account balance 75-79%: 6% 95 plus: 14% (or pro rata if 80-84%: 7% started during year) SUPERANNUATION PRESERVATION AGES Fortnightly pension cuts out by 50 for every dollar of Centrelink-assessable income above income test threshold. Full pension No pension* Single $172 $ Couple $304 $ *Likely to be hit by asset test long before income reaches this level Total assessable assets Including $20,000 of non-financial assets Including $50,000 of non-financial assets Including $75,000 of non-financial assets $170,000 or $ $ $ $300,000 or $ $1, $1, less less $180,000 $ $ $ $310,000 $1, $1, $1, $190,000 $ $ $ $320,000 $1, $1, $1, $200,000 $ $ $ $330,000 $1, $1, $1, $210,000 $ $ $ $340,000 $1, $1, $1, $220,000 $ $ $ $350,000 $1, $1, $1, $230,000 $ $ $ $360,000 $1, $1, $1, $240,000 $ $ $ $370,000 $1, $1, $1, $250,000 $ $ $ $380,000 $1, $1, $1, $260,000 $ $ $ $390,000 $1, $1, $1, $270,000 $ $ $ $400,000 $1, $1, $1, $280,000 $ $ $ $425,000 $1, $1, $1, $290,000 $ $ $ $450,000 $1, $1, $1, $300,000 $ $ $ $475,000 $1, $1, $1, $325,000 $ $ $ $500,000 $1, $1, $1, $350,000 $ $ $ $525,000 $ $ $ $375,000 $ $ $ $550,000 $ $ $ $400,000 $ $ $ $600,000 $ $ $ $425,000 $ $ $ $650,000 $ $ $ $450,000 $ $ $ $700,000 $ $ $ $475,000 $ $ $ $750,000 $ $ $ $500,000 $ $ $ $800,000 $ $ $ $525,000 $ $ $ $825,000 $76.00 $76.00 $76.00 $550,000 $50.40 $50.40 $50.40 $848,000 Nil Nil Nil $564,000 Nil Nil Nil Full pension and minimum pension results in green. Results in orange are generated by income test. Results in black text are generated by assets test. Total assessable assets includes financial and non-financial assets subject to Centrelink means testing. Financial assets include super, bank accounts, shares and managed investments. Non-financial assets include cars, furniture, sporting gear and artwork. Income test generally covers only financial assets. Assets test includes both financial and non-financial assets.

106 West Australian, Perth Author: Tracey Scotchbrook Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 3 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 9,327 Words: 600 Item ID: Page 1 of 2 Super time beyond caps Tracey Scotchbrook The small business capital gains tax concessions provide qualifying small business owners with an extremely valuable opportunity to boost their superannuation savings. Owners who sell their business may qualify to make big super contributions beyond the various caps that apply to most Aussie workers. The first concession for business operators is the 15-year exemption that allows you to put up to $1.48 million of business sale proceeds into super without incurring capital gains tax. The other you-beaut concession has been narrowly-named the CGT retirement concession because its popularity with retiring business owners. Regardless of whether the business owner is retiring but subject to various conditions, the CGT retirement concession allows people selling their business to put up to $500,000 of capital gains proceeds into super tax-free. The rules and their application can be complex and do require careful planning and advice. But if done correctly, they can provide tremendous savings on potential capital gains tax bills while significantly boosting your super. These limits are particularly valuable given the Federal Government has introduced a raft of measures in the past two years to limit the amount we can get into super by the common concessional and non-concessional contributions. Annual caps for nonconcessional contributions often made from the net proceeds of share and investment property sales have been slashed from $180,000 to $100,000, while the total amount most workers can put in from their super guarantee contributions and salary sacrifice has been capped at $25,000 annually. The $500,000 limit that applies to the CGT retirement concession and $1.48 million applying to the 15- year exemptions stand alone. However, when using the provisions you cannot contribute a total that exceeds the 15-year exemption cap. And making use of the CGT retirement contributions provisions will reduce the available 15-year exemption for future transactions. It is important to note that any amounts in excess of the prescribed limits, or which fail to satisfy the small business CGT concessions, will be treated as nonconcessional super contributions and could cop tax hits. Careful timing of contributions is necessary for those who are also considering making nonconcessional contributions. This is particularly important where the small business CGT concession contribution will result in the business owner s total super balance exceeding $1.6 million at June 30. If there is any danger you are going to get near $1.6 million, you could be better off getting the non-concessional contributions in first. Once you have maximised your non-concessional contributions, you could then start making CGT concessional contributions. Often careful forward planning is needed to ensure that a small business owner can qualify for the concessions. If you run your own business and are thinking about restructuring or selling your business or business assets, it is worth speaking to your accountant. If you qualify, these concessions are a valuable opportunity from an income tax point of view but but also for the opportunity provided to make lump sum contributions into super. Tracey Scotchbrook is a director of Superology

107 West Australian, Perth Author: Tracey Scotchbrook Section: Your Money Article type : News Item Classification : Capital City Daily : 147,676 Page: 3 Printed Size: cm² Region: WA Market: Australia ASR: AUD 9,327 Words: 600 Item ID: Page 2 of 2 PILES OF CONTRIBUTIONS CONCESSIONAL Concessional contributions come from pre-tax income and are generally taxed at 15 per cent on the way into the fund. There is a $25,000 annual contributions cap. NON-CONCESSIONAL Non-concessional contributions are money on which tax has already been paid, such as the after tax proceeds from selling shares or property. The usual annual cap is $100,000, or $300,000 in any three-year period. Extra restrictions apply to balances above $1.4 million. CGT CONCESSIONS The capital gains tax concessions for retiring business operators and the sale of businesses owned for more than 15 years effectively have a total contributions cap of $1.48 million.