AustralianSuper CEO justifies The New Daily

Animal farm propaganda

I read Judith Sloan's article in the Weekend Australian on Saturday 16th Nov and in my opinion it was incredibly well constructed and pertinent both as an AustralianSuper member herself and as a well respected financial commentator.

Garry Weaven was reported as saying he was not certain as to whether it was an investment or whether it was a marketing expense that was funding The New Daily project. If it was a marketing expense that funded The New Daily, then there must be justification of some form of "marketing" to have taken place, especially if the funds that may have claimed this as an expense to the fund at 15% are audited as required each year.

If the capital provided to The New Daily by the super funds was an investment, then Judith Sloan as a member of AustralianSuper has every right to have formulated the hard hitting letter to AustralianSuper Trustee Board Chair, Heather Ridout asking for justification and accountability regarding this investment of members funds.

AustalianSuper has a Board of 12 and out of the 20 people listed on their website under the heading of Board and noting that some of these people are alternate directors, there are 11 of them that have strong current involvement or past involvement with the union movement including the AWU, ACTU, AMWU, FSU and the IndustriAll Global Union.

The Board also includes the National Secretary of the AWU, Mr.Paul Howes, who rose to fame (and possibly fortune through the sale of his well timed book) as a "quiet" achiever, so quiet in fact that Kevin didn't hear him coming in 2010. So the members of AustralianSuper have nothing to fear that there will be any political commentary, involvement or subliminal "marketing" of ethos, philosophy or comradeship.

I look forward to Judith Sloan's article when she can then publish Heather Ridout's response to her questions or will there be a restriction placed on this response if received at all?

Does anyone really believe that The New Daily is going to inform it's subscribers or readers in a bipartisan way? Obviously Ian Silk does, but then he is employed and paid by one of the financial contributors to The New Daily, so it is unlikely his response would be any different to what has been reported.

For years and years, the Industry super funds have belted the living daylights out of retail super funds and have clearly given an impression and inference that if you pay a fee or commission for advice you will be effectively financially worse off. They have consistently provided misguided comparisons in their favour and used scare tactics to assert that charging a fee for advice is wrong and that these industry super funds are "only run for the benefit of the members".

If this is the case, AustralianSuper's Heather Ridout's response to Judith Sloan will accurately identify the benefit that Judith will receive as an individual member and all members of AustralianSuper.If The New Daily is deemed to not return a profit at all in the first few years, if at all and this must be known by the Trustees of the super funds that are stumping up the capital for the New Daily, how then do the Trustees deem this venture an appropriate investment on behalf of their members. It's not an investment if it doesn't actually include a quantifiable potential to return a profit. This fact would have been clearly known to the Trustees of AustralianSuper as part of the due diligence and assessment of the value to their members of committing the capital. This process you would assume be recorded in the Board minutes and would make interesting reading.

My eventual response from AS informed me that the "The initial response to The New Daily has been largely positive" Silk, Shorten's mate, claims an enormous amount of positive feedback from members.

I have read online much support for the "free" venture from non-members. However it is very hard to judge the support of members. Is the support that this emergent club is relying on from members or non-members. One tool for displaying support would I would think be the AS blog. I tried to comment there. My comment disappeared into the ether and then comments closed, with no comments published, zilch. A member or non member can indicate they like however. Not much traffic on the site for likes, but at least the other articles have likes in 2 figures. The New Daily, just 2 likes.

Either AS is censoring all comments because they are displeased with them, or those declaring their support want their support to be hidden. Or there is no swell of support, only anger.