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There’s a pretty dispiriting battle going on at the moment between the big superannuation funds over who gets to control the billions of dollars of ordinary workers’ superannuation money.

The Assistant Treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, is trying to bring in superannuation fund disclosure laws that were actually urged by Labor’s own 2010 review into superannuation. Here’s the Treasury discussion paper on superannuation disclosure. More...

This week, in Business Spectator, ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips wrote about a ‘mystery’ box that arrived in the post for him some years ago. It contained the true financial records of a major trade union. The records differed from the union’s publicly declared accounts. The point of Ken's article is that full transparency and disclosure should be imposed on the big superannuation funds or we could see corruption scandals in superannuation similar to those we are seeing with unions.  More...

Last week, ICA’s Executive Director, Ken Phillips, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Turnbull which was published in Business Spectator. It was about the PM’s desire for an innovation society. Ken said small business innovation is in trouble because of the Tax Office and other matters. He said that there are two tasks:  More...

ICA has expressed concern for some time about the proposed ‘stepping back’ by the Australian government over investment advice disclosure rules. In this, we drew on the criticisms voiced by Alan Kohler, one of Australia’s most respected financial commentators. Here’s what he said in Business Spectator in February and, more recently, here and here. More...

One of the pressing public policy issues that needs more attention is superannuation. We’ve been tracking this since 2010.  We remain concerned that the new Minister for Superannuation, Senator Sinodinos, is involved in a game of double standards.  More...

There’s a new ‘Establishment’ in Australia comprised of unions and big businesses. ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips explains how this operates, how it makes management weak and damages Australia. Further, he argues that the Abbott government is turning its back on the ‘Establishment’. That’s a positive for reforming Australia into a competitive economy. More...

While the Abbott government is proposing disclosure requirements on unions, it is planning to remove similar requirements on financial advisers. Alan Kohler explains this well in Business Spectator. Minister Sinodonis is behind this. We’ve been critical of him before when he tried to attack Self Managed Super Funds. The Minister needs to ensure consistency with the government’s reforming efforts on disclosure. More...