The controversy surrounding Labor's decision to appoint David Gonski as chairman of the Future Fund has escalated further, with former treasurer Peter Costello ― who the fund's board had recommended for the position ― accusing the federal government of basic incompetence in its oversight of the fund, according to a report by The Australian.

"It's not about me, it's about the fund and it's about government incompetence,” Mr Costello said. “It's a failure of governance and my concern is that the Future Fund, which is one of the most respected sovereign wealth funds in the world, which should engage in best practice, has not engaged in it because of government incompetence.”

Mr Gonski had earlier been tasked with surveying the fund's board for their thoughts on who should replace outgoing chairman David Murray. He reportedly passed on their recommendation that Mr Costello be appointed, but the government instead chose to appoint Mr Gonski to the role.

Mr Costello called on the government to release Mr Gonski's full report, but Finance Minister Penny Wong Thursday night refused to do so.


“I think the process under which the government commissioned the report and leaked it, and leaked it to a selected journalist, has created problems for the governance of the fund,” Mr Costello told ABC TV's 7:30 program.

Mr Costello has refused to resign as a Future Fund board member, saying he wants to follow through on his commitment to the fund that began when he established it while serving as treasurer.

"The Future Fund was something that I conceived, I legislated it and I put every dollar of capital into it, every dollar," he said, according to The Australian Financial Review. "No other treasurer, no finance minister, nobody, has put a dollar of capital into this fund except for me."

Mr Costello went on to describe comments by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy that Mr Constello had a sense of entitlement as "foolish and juvenile", the AFR reported.

Former Reserve Bank board members and other senior business executives said the way the government handled the Future Fund appointment would discourage people from working with the Gillard government, according to The Australian.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Peter-Costello-blasts-Labor-over-Future-Fund-crisi-pd20120315-SEMK9?OpenDocument&src=am&utm_source=exact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=22666&utm_campaign=am&modapt=news

The only inkling of competence in anything to do with Australian peoples money, was just shot down in flames.

Oh well, yet another reason to hate this government and want them out ASAP.

____ wrote on Mar 16^th, 2012 at 9:13am:


yeah wow... 12 years in the job and he makes one mistake. a mistake that was supported by analysts at the time...

big deal.

its always amazing that anything good is passed off as pure chance or to keating but anything bad is always Costellos fault. its positions liek that which make your commentary worthless.

longweekend58 wrote on Mar 16^th, 2012 at 9:17am:




Which one mistake in my post are you discussing


Skilled Shortages

Job Losses

Collapsing the value of our Gold Exports.

Having a secret slush fund to buy elections.



Or would you like to discuss another issue, the collapse of the Murray Darling Basin, that Costello was part of ?

____ wrote on Mar 16^th, 2012 at 9:38am:


every single point you made was in error. even the MDB which  - just in case you are stil lnot aware of is under entirely STATE jurisdiction which has been labor governed,

longweekend58 wrote on Mar 16^th, 2012 at 9:17am:


And here we have longweekends version of history,why are you always trying to change history LW? is it because you have difficulty excepting that those truths you deny reflect badly on your beloved Liberals?

Here are the real facts about that accountant Costello,

As greens says sold off the gold reserves , causing a world wide panic, His decision alone but you want to try and blame others.

The only Treasurer, I repeat The only Treasurer to have lost money on the forex markets If I recall the amount was $5m,
Funny how even Labors Ralph Willis could manage to make $100m every year,

The Future Fund, anybody else see the lie in the OP?
Costello claims the idea as his, an outright lie by him
The first mention of a future fund was in "The intergenerational  Report by Simon Crean, The future fund was his idea  and Costello stole it, no mention of the future fund before Crean mentioned it.

Infrastructure spending plummeted under Howard and Costello,

Surplus all due to record taxes, not smart book keeping by Costello.

As somebody else said he was a good accountant but lacked any vision.

Bobby. wrote on Mar 16^th, 2012 at 9:37am:


The same Keating who gave us the recession we had to have? The same Keating who dove interest rates through the roof? The same Keating who left Howard with nearly $100 billion in debt? That Keating? Yeah, like anyone would fear anything that moron has to say.

The ALP consists of brown nosing career ex-unionists who have been raised in the union chookhouse which specializes in brown nosing, lying, utter conformity, and look after your own interests at all costs.

A lot of these charmers come straight from university with a degree in some form of industrial law, economics, or political science and, often with a little help from contacts, go straight into the union.

There they learn how to brown nose as absolute loyalty is required, they learn how to deceive and to tell lies convincingly, and, most importantly, they learn how to count the ALL IMPORTANT NUMBERS.

So the union chookhouse is an inwardly focused protected rarefied environment which is most concerned with its own survival and, accordingly, rewards only the very best brown nosers with a pre-selection in some unfortunate electorate.

So a new Labor member is superbly skilled in brown nosing, number counting, and utter devotion to THE UNION that made it all possible.

In the union chookhouse the devout are taught that small and large businesses are there to EXPLOIT for all it is worth using all the pro-union features of the Gillard designed FWA which is a disgrace.

So the new Labor wonder child has no experience in anything other than utter devotion to the union, so it is no surprise that these people have little understanding and don't really care how the Australian economy really works.

How can you run a country if you've never lived in the real world?
by: Janet Albrechtsen From:The Australian March 21, 2012 12:00AM 65

THIS is getting embarrassing. If we need reminders of what happens when politicians lack real life experience, we need only tune into Canberra on a regular basis.

The debacle last week surrounding the appointment of the new chairman to the Future Fund is in keeping with the growing list of policy stuff-ups, implementation disasters and astonishing failures to follow sound process by the federal government. The cause of each blunder is as simple as it is consistent: those who are running the country are political careerists who have never run a business. They haven't a clue about what the 4.5 million Australians whowork in the two million small businesses in this country do. Nor do our politicians know anything about running a big business. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find in federal parliament a former tradie, a train driver, or a member of the working class who toils on the shop floor. The people's representatives are not representative of the people anymore.

This is a most curious state of affairs. The modern clarion call from progressives is that all sorts of institutions, from the High Court of Australia to boardrooms across the nation, must be more representative of the broader community. We are told that legitimacy, good decisions, not to mention sound processes, depend on a body reflecting an authentic slice of Australia.

Now look inside the big house on the hill, the home of Australian democracy. Look particularly at the side where the government sits. The biographies of Gillard ministers read like carbon copies of each other: former unionists, political staffers, lawyers with union law firms, party apparatchiks, a few teachers, more union organisers, more political staffers, the odd academic. The one closest to being self-employed is a former musician with Midnight Oil. Disconnected from the life experiences of most Australians, these ministers seem to stumble from one mess to the next, not comprehending the nature of their mistakes.

Observations about the present political disconnect are not new. Trying to explain Labor's malaise in the polls, plenty of senior Labor people have mulled over the narrow gene pool in Canberra. Last year former NSW Labor premier Neville Wran, whose first cabinet included a pharmacist, a car salesman and a bricklayer, to name just a few of the occupations of his ministry, said that Labor no longer represents its traditional base. Last November former federal senator Stephen Loosley called for the apparatchiki to be "dramatically reduced at the next round of ALP preselections". Paul Keating has said the problem with Labor is it doesn't like the working class much anymore.

As academic Nick Dyrenfurth, author of several books about the ALP, has told us, Labor has moved far from its roots. The party's raison d'etre was that only a party of the workers could truly represent workers. As Dyrenfurth wrote last year, "it beggars belief that federal Labor's ranks contain no self-employed tradies". Contrast the Hawke ministry, which included a "doctor, shearer, farmer, policeman, teachers, lawyers, two businessmen, a priest and an accountant" with the Gillard ministry, chock full of political careerists. "These folks aren't bad people," wrote Dyrenfurth, "but their narrow life experiences have arguably contributed to the party's inability to sell its policies to the electorate".

There is nothing arguable about it. And lack of life experience doesn't just inhibit the Labor Party selling its policies. This state of affairs encourages poor processes that invariably produce poor policies. Little wonder then that Labor has problems selling its policies. By their own mouths, Labor ministers admit to the dysfunction in government. Health Minister Nicola Roxon recently revealed that former PM Kevin Rudd gave four days' notice of his intention to take over the entire health system. There was no legal advice, not even a cabinet submission. Rudd's pink batts policy was a disaster from start to finish. Implementation of Labor's school stimulus policy was another costly mess. Communications minister Stephen Conroy has pursued the $36 billion National Broadband Network, which was conceived on board a VIP flight with Rudd, without so much as a cost-benefit analysis. Wayne Swan pushed ahead with an ill-conceived resources super-profits tax without bothering to consult the states or the mining industry.

Now take Rudd out of the equation. Julia Gillard's half-baked East Timor solution and her equally ill-considered Malaysia solution suggest policy naivete of the highest order. The Gillard government's sudden halt to beef exports revealed an amateurish level of fickleness. Gillard's overpriced carbon tax is detached from reality. The government twice ignored the recommendations of the panel overseeing the tender of the Australia Network. Now, after having 12 months to appoint a new chairman to the $73 billion Future Fund, the Labor government has ignored the suggestion of its own consultant David Gonski to appoint Peter Costello as Future Fund chairman. Appointing Gonski as chairman, the government conflicted the Sydney businessman and again displayed a deplorable lack of real-world smarts. But then, why on earth would the federal Labor government understand good corporate governance when its own processes and policies lack sound judgment?

Last year, Conroy famously laughed off and indeed swore at the notion of Australia attracting a new level of sovereign risk after so many policy switches and blunders. He may be right that "sovereign risk" is the wrong phrase.

So let's try this: Labor's history of policy capriciousness and implementation disasters is a nightmare for business and investors searching for certainty. Laughing off his government's history of ineptitude simply points to his own gold-class membership of a clueless political class.

As a first step, it is constructive that senior Labor thinkers have written intellectual pieces about the problematic rise of a narrow class of political insiders within the ALP. Now let's hear these same people admit the real price of having political careerists running the country. Let these wise men 'fess up to the policy stuff-ups, the bungled implementation of policies and the appalling lack of process.

A more effective wake-up to the ALP and the future of Australian politics depends on making that intellectually honest link. And the Liberal Party can ill afford to gloat about Labor's incompetence. At a dinner in Melbourne a few weeks back, former Liberal prime minister John Howard lamented the rise of an insular, inexperienced political class within his own beloved party. It may be that the only difference between the two parties on this front is that right now Labor's political careerists are running the country. The same problems may well emerge when the Coalition is in the driver's seat.

janeta@bigpond.net.au
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/how-can-you-run-a-country-if-youve-...

Comments on this story

Jannie of Perth Posted at 11:40 AM Today
Great article Janet, and it is interesting that the great majority of comments agree. I am struck by the absence of the denigrating trolls who used to carp at every word you wrote, before the requirement to pay for access to the Oz was introduced. Gone to the Drum I suppose.

Emo Posted at 11:35 AM Today
I have seen Ben's at 10.15. He is on the right track. I was at Adelaide uni in the late 60s and early 70s, and saw the left's takeover of the campus and the campus press then. The atmosphere there was the same - ask an honest, well intentioned question that they didn't like and you were OUT for good. For ever marked. That lot had it all worked out .."we will make business so hard that the capitalists are too busy to get involved in politics". I have a few other quotes like that. They were not good or decent people at all, widely read, mouthing social justice slogans but never heart felt - telling us what to think and do. A means to position and power for most. After uni, many of these people went into politics, unions, law and judicial, journalism, acaedemia, teaching etc.