BFCSA Blog

Liberal senator David Bushby's resignation from federal politics came out of the blue at 1.10pm on Friday, with the Tasmanian saying he looked forward to "a new chapter in my professional career".   It took exactly 60 minutes to find out the details. At 2.10pm, Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced Senator Bushby would be appointed as Australia's new consul-general to the United States in Chicago. The appointment just months from a federal election the government is widely expected to lose has irritated the Labor opposition, which says it will review the decision, as well as the posting of former attorney-general George Brandis as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and former Western Australian premier Richard Court as ambassador to Japan. "We’re not guaranteeing any of these [appointments]. We will be assessing appointments on their merits," said a spokesman for shadow foreign minister Penny Wong.   "It says something about the Coalition’s...

Liberal Party shock as Kelly O'Dwyer quits politics ahead of election   The Liberal Party will lose one of its most senior women and moderate figures with Jobs and Industrial Relations Minister Kelly O'Dwyer to quit politics. Ms O'Dwyer was flanked by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday afternoon as she announced she will not recontest her Melbourne electorate of Higgins at the election. She said she was "absolutely confident" Mr Morrison would lead the Coalition to victory in at the election but she could not commit to another three years in public life. Ms O'Dwyer said part of her motivation was her desire, at 41, to have a third child and "everything would have to go right" for that to happen. Her children will soon reach primary school age and she did not want to "consistently miss out" on important time with her family.   "This does not mean that...

Chinese investors protest against new crackdown on investment Australian Financial Review 17 Jan 2019 11:44 PM Su-Lin Tan   The Foreign Investment Review Board's decision to increase the level of screening of Chinese companies investing in Australia was unnecessary and a backflip on the promises made in the China-Australia Foreign Trade Agreement (FTA), Chinese investors, private companies and deal makers say. Both Chinese groups who have either done or yet to do business in Australia were angered by the token "political move" and warned that not only would Chinese investors leave Australia altogether but it would break down the China-Australia trade relationship which Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared to be repairing. On Thursday, The Australian Financial Review revealed that Australia's foreign investment regulator no longer believed private companies in China were free of Communist Party control, and planned on subjecting Chinese takeovers and deals to more screening on national security grounds....

ASIC snubs two-thirds of MySuper funds in default search Australian Financial Review 17 Jan 2019 11:00 PM Joanna Mather   EXCLUSIVE  The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is tendering for a new default superannuation provider, but will only consider bids from funds with $10 billion-plus to shield its employees from lousy returns. Of the 92 super providers that offer products eligible to receive default contributions, only 28 are estimated to meet ASIC's size requirement. In other words, about two-thirds of the MySuper products on the market have been deemed unsuitable to host ASIC's default members because they are too small. "ASIC chose larger funds because it believed that in the long term they would be more likely to have less fees and greater returns, as they were more likely to achieve economies of scale," an ASIC spokesman said. The ASIC tender comes amid debate over how to overhaul the $700 billion...

Hayne’s grenade about to explode The Australian 12:00am January 18, 2019 Joyce Moullakis   Just two weeks stand between the beleaguered financial services sector and the wash-up from the biggest probe into its misdemeanours in recent history. Following an early January hiatus, the countdown to the Hayne royal commission’s landmark final report — which may let off a grenade in the industry — is resuming. The institutions in the firing line have a nervous wait to see whether Kenneth Hayne will recommend criminal charges or referrals to the corporate regulator. The commission has already driven sweeping changes to entrenched business models and threatens to up-end even more. The report is due to be submitted to the federal government and Governor-General Peter Cosgrove by February 1, but it remains unclear when the industry and a disturbed public will get the chance to sift through its volumes. Given 2019 is a federal election...

Opal builder Icon sets date for big fix, but it will take four to six weeks The Australian 12:00am January 18, 2019 Ean Higgins   The builder of the cracked Opal Tower in Sydney’s west plans to start work fixing it next week, subject to final negotiations with ­engineers representing owners. But it has warned more than 100 units will not be ready for reoccupation for four to six weeks. A spokeswoman for Icon, the Japanese-owned group that built the recently completed 36-storey block at Olympic Park, said the company had decided it would carry out the remediation, expected to be a huge and costly task though no figures have been released. “All the materials have already been ordered, everything is there on site,” the spokeswoman said. However, Icon, which built the 392-unit high rise under a $165 million contract with developer Ecove, said while it would take on that responsibility,...

NZ move could cut bank payouts The Australian 12:44pm January 17, 2019 Joyce Moullakis   New Zealand’s proposed higher bank capital requirements are “unnecessary and potentially damaging” and could prompt Australia’s major banks to cut ­dividends, UBS analysts have warned. UBS came out swinging after taking a closer look at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s revised capital initiatives — announced last month and open for consultation until March 29 — and found they have huge implications for Australia’s banks, which account for 88 per cent of NZ’s banking assets. Other analysts have said what the RBNZ is proposing would be likely to see Australian banks shift more capital to their NZ entities or possibly raise new capital, depending on the final shape of the requirements. The slated changes materially increase the amount of capital held by NZ banks, with the RBNZ suggesting increases will range from 20 per cent to...

Are we headed towards high noon for democracy? The Australian 12:00am January 18, 2019 Henry Ergas   In 1923, as the Weimar Republic struggled with chaos, the German polymath Carl Schmitt wrote a short but enormously influential book, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Schmitt later destroyed his reputation through his collaboration with the Hitler regime. But if his work is increasingly cited, it is because its contemporary resonance is undeniable. To say that is not to suggest that today’s circumstances resemble those that drove ­Europe into the horrors of totalitarianism. Yet with the US government plunged into a shutdown that only a presidential declaration of a state of emergency is likely to end, and Britain in a crisis that seems ­irresoluble, Schmitt’s warnings cannot simply be ­dismissed. The notion of “liberal democracy”, he ­argued, was fundamentally ill-conceived. Liberalism and democracy had certainly been allies in the battle to rein in the...

She won't be right: the economic storm our leaders ignore Sydney Morning Herald 18 January 2019 12:00am John Hewson John Hewson is a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, and a former Liberal opposition leader.   "It’s the economy, stupid" – a slogan and a focus that largely won the US presidency for Bill Clinton in 1992. He then went on to reap the benefits of Bush senior’s economic management, not yet evident at the time of the election. The issue of economic management is usually a significant issue at our federal elections, with polling consistently suggesting the LNP has an edge as “better economic managers”. Perceptions matter in politics, but realities are ultimately determinant. Even though both our major parties have warned recently of global storm clouds ahead for our economy this year, neither is actually prepared to spell out the full significance of the risks, particularly...

Nursing home residents ‘doped for years at a time’ The Australian 12:00am January 15, 2019 Rick Morton   EXCLUSIVE  A damning submission to the aged-care royal commission reveals elderly nursing home residents have been doped for years at a time with psychotropic drugs, one of which is prescribed in Australia for only three-month sessions and is not approved for dementia patients overseas. Unprecedented research by former pharmacist and current dementia researcher Juanita Westbury found the use of “as-needed” antipsychotic prescriptions in nursing homes was the highest it had been. Council on the Ageing chief executive Ian Yates has backed Dr Westbury and says the royal commission must address the issue “because it is systemic, unlike physical and sexual violence”. “We have seen a significant shift from physical restraints to chemical restraint in the past ­decade, or even longer, so now it is hidden,” Mr Yates said. “Residents in aged-care homes are...

  Banks turn to covered bonds as funding spreads widen Australian Financial Review 14 Jan 2019 7:10 PM Jonathan Shapiro   Australia's big four banks have turned to ultra-safe covered bonds to meet their annual funding targets, as wholesale funding margins have increased to their highest level in two years. On Friday, ANZ Banking Group completed a £750 million ($1.34 billion) AAA-rated covered bond issue, marking the first time the bank had turned to this form of funding in more than a year. Covered bonds grant investors additional security because they are backed by a pool of mortgages. They rank ahead of senior bonds, followed by Tier II bonds, which carry additional risks because they can be "bailed-in" or converted to equity in a crisis. Tier II bonds however rank ahead of Tier I hybrids and ordinary shareholder equity, which are the most expensive forms of capital for banks to raise....

Labor's capital expenditure tax plan welcomed by business Australian Financial Review 14 Jan 2019 8:00 PM John Kehoe   Business pressure is building on the Morrison government to beat Labor's proposed $10 billion in accelerated tax breaks for corporate capital expenditure that will reward investment-intensive manufacturers, energy generators, oil and gas producers, miners and other firms. The little-noticed 20 per cent instant asset write-off for capital expenditure above $20,000 is one of Labor's few economic policies that will directly help the big end of town. It contrasts with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's class-war rhetoric, planned tax hikes on the wealthy and proposed bolstering of trade union power. In the lead-up to the federal government budget in April and expected May election, the Morrison government is under pressure from business to counter Labor's corporate tax policy, after Mr Shorten blocked the Coalition's proposed cut to the 30 per cent tax rate for...

Commercial property deals fall 9pc as transaction market enters downturn Australian Financial Review 14 Jan 2019 5:54 PM Larry Schlesinger   Transaction activity in Australian commercial real estate has entered a cyclical downturn with new figures from CBRE showing the value of deals fell 9 per cent to $32.8 billion in 2018 in part due to a major slump in Chinese investment. Over the same period, the volume of deals slumped 10 per cent to their lowest level in five years, with CBRE recording 818 deals valued at $5 million or more over the year compared with 908 deals in 2017 and 1055 deals in 2016. A major factor in the large fall in activity in 2018 was a pullback from Chinese investors with the CBRE figures showing they spent just over $1 billion on commercial property in 2018 – also the lowest figure in five years. "With a large volume...

One third of self-managed super funds are too small to make adequate returns The New Daily 10:16pm, Jan 14 Rod Myer   Almost half of Australians with self-managed super funds are undercutting their own retirements, according to last week’s Productivity Commission report into superannuation, which found many funds were too small to make comparable returns. Despite the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority expressing concern about SMSF borrowings for at least five years, debt in the funds blew out by 47.5 per cent in the year to September 2017 as regulators tried to wind back property investment. In its report on super, the PC said: “Large SMSFs earn broadly similar net returns to APRA-regulated funds, but smaller ones (with less than $500,000 in assets) perform significantly worse on average.” Almost half of funds too small “An estimated 380,000 members are in smaller SMSFs that have been established for more than two years. The...

Future Fund tender plan for superannuation Australian Financial Review 15 Jan 2019 5:55 AM John Kehoe   EXCLUSIVE  The federal government would host competitive tenders to manage default superannuation investments for workers to try to deliver higher returns via a system involving the Future Fund, under an option being canvassed by the Morrison government. Some senior Liberals are sceptical of regulators selecting the best 10 default superannuation funds for new workforce entrants, as recommended by the Productivity Commission's report last week, though it hasn't been ruled out. An option being explored by senior ministers is the Future Fund being called in as part of a competitive government-run tender to help manage the superannuation investments of workers, according to senior sources. Industry and retail superannuation funds, or other asset managers, could bid to manage the day-to-day buying and selling investment decisions, potentially after the $149 billion sovereign wealth fund made high-level asset...

Engineers question strength of Opal Tower support beams The Australian 12:00am January 15, 2019 Elias Visontay   EXCLUSIVE  Engineers investigating defects at Sydney’s Opal Tower have raised doubts about errors in the design of key horizontal support beams. As an interim report into the cracking of concrete panels that triggered two evacuations of the building is expected to be released, investigators disagree as to whether the grade of reinforced concrete used in the support beams was strong enough to withstand the pressure of precast concrete panels installed on top of them. Several sources close to the ­investigation have told The Australian that one theory is that the beams lacked sufficient strength, causing pressure on the concrete panels, which cracked and sparked the evacuations. But another theory is that grouting between the precast panels and the beams contributed to the cracking in the panels. Investigators’ reports handed to Planning Minister Anthony Roberts...

The Australian Dream Died Alone in an Apartment Bloomberg January 12, 2019 David Fickling David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities, as well as industrial and consumer companies. He has been a reporter for Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Guardian.   For people in the U.S., the American Dream is a vision of broadly shared prosperity, freedom and opportunity. Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream focuses on rising incomes and national renewal. Australians once had a simpler aspiration: owning a detached suburban home on a quarter-acre of land. That vision died a while ago. Back in the 1980s, single-family detached homes comprised about three-quarters of building approvals, and even through the 1990s and 2000s the proportion was still around two-thirds. Since then, it’s plummeted to less than half, with high-rises taking up an increasing share of Australia’s traditionally single-story skylines. In many ways,...

Call to close errant developers’ loopholes The Australian 12:00am January 14, 2019 Sam Buckingham-Jones   More than 1350 construction companies in Australia went into administration in a 12-month ­period, a figure experts say highlights how some are used to avoid liability, leaving unit owners and body corporates exposed. In the wake of the fallout from the Opal Tower fiasco, in which more than 300 people were evacuated on Christmas Eve after cracks appeared in the Sydney building, construction industry veterans have called for proposed reforms to be fast-tracked. According to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission’s most recent insolvency statistics, 1354 construction companies entered external administration in the year to September 2018. The previous year, to September 2017, there were 1506, and 1647 for the 2016 period. In NSW, owners can take the builder and developer of an apartment block to court under the state’s statutory warranties, which are two years...

Pressure on banks to raise rates The Australian 12:00am January 14, 2019 David Rogers   Pressure is growing on Australia’s major banks to wind back new mortgage discounts and push through further out-of-cycle increases to lending rates in response to higher funding costs. Last week’s home loan rate rises by Bank of Queensland could trigger a new round of increases despite a still record-low official cash rate set by the Reserve Bank, analysts warned. At the same time a run-up in global funding costs could increase the chance of an official rate cut later this year. “Another blowout in bank funding costs is adding to the pressure for an RBA rate cut,” said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy and chief economist at AMP Capital. “This is bad news for households seeing falling house prices.” In recent months, the difference in yield between three-month bank bills and the expected RBA cash...

Regulators sound alarm over SMSF property speculation The Australian 12:00am January 14, 2019 Michael Roddan   EXCLUSIVE  A surge in property speculation by leveraged self-managed super funds amid sliding house prices in the nation’s biggest cities has sparked concerns among the powerful Council of Financial Regulators that many may be in over their heads. Confidential documents, obtained by The Australian under Freedom of Information rules, reveal a renewed rush by SMSFs to take out mortgages for property investment despite an increasing crackdown by the major banks to close off the problematic credit products. Documents collated for the regulator show the total value of property investment loans held by SMSFs has raced to $39 billion — more than 5 per cent of all assets in the $700bn self-managed super sector by the end of the June quarter. Loans for property investment through SMSFs are considered “limited recourse” because if the loan defaults,...