Peter Martin is the Economics Editor for The Age.
Union-dominated super funds would lose their special status under a draft Productivity Commission recommendation that would delink superannuation from awards and allocate new workers to default funds only once.
The non-profit industry funds want you to think there's nothing wrong. They are most often the funds new employees are defaulted into and they perform the best, on average far better than their for-profit competitors.
Australia runs the risk of becoming the new Japan, "crippled by pension spending" unless it winds back the entitlements of a swelling aged population, a study says.
In the last 12 months 82,800 Australians have moved to Victoria from interstate, around 500 carloads a week.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has castigated Australia for inadequate progress on tax, Indigenous affairs and support for business in a report card to be presented to finance ministers from the group of 20 leading industrial nations in Germany on Saturday.
Consumer confidence in the Australian housing market has collapsed to its lowest level in 27 years, with the proportion of Australians believing real estate was the wisest place to put savings falling to below 12 per cent, the lowest level since 1974.
"They have contracts with the owners not to vote," says governance expert.
Investors have roared back into the housing market, buying properties that would have otherwise gone to owner-occupiers, and embarrassing the government by taking out more than half of the new money meant for housing.
The OECD has warned of a "rout" in Australian house prices leading to a new economic downturn, saying both prices and household debt have reached "unprecedented highs".
Australia has avoided a second consecutive quarter of negative economic growth, rising by 1.1 per cent in the December quarter and beating market expectations.
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