“As an organisation whose trustee members care deeply about good governance, we buckled on the armour and waded into the inquiry fray” GERARD NOONAN PRESIDENT
A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT and simultaneously created a vast pool of patient capital which has underpinned financial stability in this country. Revisiting and improving the experiment at the end of the difficult decade of the Noughties deserves loud and sustained acclaim. Assuming that Minister Bowen’s successor, Bill Shorten, is able to steer the necessary legislation through the parliamentary shoals in 2011, it will be an achievement of great proportions. Among all this wonder, <strong>2010</strong> also proved to be the year of government-inspired inquiry: recently-retired Treasury Secretary Ken Henry’s taxation inquiry, the Labor MP Bernie Ripoll’s inquiry into shady dealings in the financial advisory industry and former regulator Jeremy Cooper’s inquiry into the shape and operations of Australia’s overall superannuation system. Gerard Noonan, President (FAIST) SUPER’S ANNUS MIRABILI <strong>2010</strong> may be the postcode for Sydney’s feisty inner city suburb of Darlinghurst, but for those of us in the superannuation industry who take our trustee roles seriously, <strong>2010</strong> was the year of wonders, superannuation’s own annus mirabili (year of wonders). Wonders about whether the global financial crisis would eventually abate and allow us to declare some positive returns to our members. Wonders about which government, or which political party, or even which leader we needed to approach about our concerns as trustees. Wonders about whether the political class’s obsession <strong>with</strong> changing the rules about superannuation would diminish. Wonders, too, whether the little-known, mild-mannered, and relatively junior government Minister Chris Bowen would be able to convince his own political masters that <strong>2010</strong> was the year, a decade and a half overdue, that Labor’s great superannuation experiment should continue, and that the super guarantee charge of 9 per cent should become 12 per cent <strong>with</strong>in a decade. The experiment first hatched in the 1980s has already put Australia in the front ranks of world players in retirement planning for its citizenry As an organisation whose trustee members care deeply about the good governance of that pool of capital on behalf of millions of our members, we buckled on the armour and waded into the inquiry fray. Much of the preparation involved consultations <strong>with</strong> trustees, staff and experts in our member funds and service providers to ensure our own research and policy approaches were rigorous, consistent and pithy. Led by the AIST’s indefatigable CEO Fiona Reynolds, the AIST policy and research team produced thousands of pages of material in response to the Henry and Ripoll inquiries and the three Cooper position papers that appeared throughout the year. Fiona was in constant demand by the <strong>Australian</strong> media for a reasoned commentary on the progress of each of the inquiries. She and other senior staffers at AIST, as well as myself and other members of the AIST Board and policy committee, were involved in protracted and intense discussions throughout late 2009 and <strong>2010</strong> <strong>with</strong> Jeremy Cooper, staffers of the Cooper inquiry, Ministers Bowen and Shorten, Federal Treasury officials (who staffed the Henry taxation review and had significant input into the Cooper inquiry), parliamentarians, fellow trustees, employer associations, unions, superannuation and governance ‘experts’, even the Federal Opposition’s changing guard of superannuation spokesmen. The point To make sure that the final reports of each inquiry reflected a principled and practical result that advanced the cause of ‘all profits 9
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