Future Fund

When David Gonski fronted up to his first day of work as the new Chairman of the Future Fund this week, he walked into a flurry of controversy from unexpected quarters.

Not only was Gonski’s appointment ungraciously questioned by Peter Costello (who felt entitled to the position himself) but he was also subjected to a small band of gas-mask wearing demonstrators outside the Fund’s Melbourne office demanding that the Australian tax-payers money should not be channeled through the Future Fund into companies that manufacture nuclear weapons.

By midweek, online activist group GetUp! had send an email to hundreds of thousands of Australians about the future fund’s activities and, by Thursday, over ten thousand had signed an online petition. It was clear that Gonski may have inherited more toxic skeletons in the Future Funds closet from its former Chairman David Murray than he had bargained for.

Continue reading "Your taxes hard at work making mushroom clouds" »

Nick Minchin is spot on. Making Peter Costello chairman of the Future Fund would have been a very bad decision. If Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and the rest of the coalition’s current economic brains trust can’t see that, it is a real worry.

“The fund must be and be seen to be independent, professional, completely above politics and entirely apolitical,” Minchin wrote yesterday in a letter to The Australian newspaper. Appointing a former politician—even one of the stature of Costello—as chairman would therefore be most unwise.”

He added that those members of the Fund’s board of guardians who favoured the appointment of the former Treasurer to the job were “naïve”. Minchin knows what he is talking about. As Finance Minister for the last six years of the Howard Government, he was—with Costello—the co-creator of the fund set up to make provision for unfunded Commonwealth superannuation liabilities.

Continue reading "Abbott listens to Costello only when it suits him" »

The Federal Government has recently attacked British American Tobacco for using the image of a Kangaroo on its cigarette packages overseas. Attorney-General Nicola Roxon labelled it as “un-Australian” and demanded that the tobacco companies “get [their] hands off our icon”.

The government is indignant and says that the sale of cigarettes has nothing to do with Australia. Unfortunately that is not entirely true.

Almost $150 million of Australian tax dollars are currently invested in tobacco companies like Phillip Morris and British American Tobacco through the Future Fund.

Continue reading "The Government should give up the smokes" »

Early this year, with minimal fuss, the government-owned Future Fund made a principled choice to divest taxpayers’ dollars from companies that produce cluster bombs and land mines – pernicious devices that kill and maim long after a conflict has ended. Their victims, overwhelmingly, are civilians.

Based on this decision, one might assume that the fund – which was set up in 2006 to cover the pension costs of retiring politicians, judges and public servants – has also excluded nuclear weapon companies. After all, these have grave humanitarian consequences too.

But not so. Documents obtained by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in May revealed that the Future Fund owns $135 million worth of stocks in 15 companies that build nuclear arms for the United States, Britain, France and India.

Continue reading "Political retirement village built on nuclear weapons" »

Birmingham is known as Britain’s forgotten city. Well, it would be if anyone bothered to mention it at all.

Having long ceased to be England’s industrial centre, the capital of the Midlands (yawn) is now notable for being about halfway between London and Manchester.

One of its two landmarks is “Spaghetti Junction”, an intertwined series of motorway overpasses. Yes, a motorway junction!

Continue reading "Aussies you are now the proud owner of Birmingham" »