A LEADING actuary who blew the whistle on the enormous cost of privatising the state government’s employee superannuation administor, GESB, has been appointed to its board.
A LEADING actuary who blew the whistle on the enormous cost of privatising the state government’s employee superannuation administor, GESB, has been appointed to its board.
PwC partner Catherine Nance, who first raised alarm bells within government about the potential $467 million cost of the privatisation plan, is the second major appointment to the GESB board in recent weeks, following the addition of John Langoulant to replace Phil Harvey as outgoing chairman.
The moves suggest the state government has a renewed determination to restructure GESB following its decision to end the privatisation last year following a review into the future of the $11 billion fund.
The efforts to change direction at GESB appear to have been hampered by poor relations between it and the government. The GESB issue also took a back seat for six months when Troy Buswell was forced to quit as treasurer soon after deciding the fund’s fate.
Mr Langoulant is a former state under-treasurer who is seen as one of the state’s most influential business people, having run the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
He currently heads the company behind the massive Oakajee port project.
Ms Nance is a well-known adviser to the superannuation sector across Australia, working out of a Melbourne base but retaining close ties to Perth where she once had her own business.
In 2008, as an adviser to the state government, she raised concerns about the cost of the GESB mutualisation, questioning hundreds of millions of dollars of reserves that would have been shifted from the state to a private entity in the form of reserves.
Ms Nance’s concerns in turn caused the state’s under-treasurer, Tim Marney, to highlight the issue with then-treasurer Eric Ripper, who brought the privatisation to a halt just one day before it was due to go ahead on July 1 2008.
In January last year, former federal public servant Rod Whithear recommended that the privatisation plan be abandoned. Mr Whithear also recommended that WA government employees be able to opt out of the state-run fund to choose their superannuation provider.
The government accepted those recommendations in April, promising superannuation choice for public servants within 12 to 18 months.
But some observers of the sector believe GESB has been slow to act when it comes to delivering on the government’s timetable or showing any enthusiasm for the change in policy.
An example cited is GESB’s continued promotion to superannuants to roll other funds into GESB, a direct contradiction of the Whithear recommendations accepted by the state.
Observers see that Mr Langoulant and Ms Nance will better bridge the divide between Treasury, which has been charged with implementing government policy regarding this issue, and GESB’s board and management, which have been big backers of the privatisation.
In addition to her role at PwC, Ms Nance is on the board of the Western Australian Treasury Corporation, where she is chair of the audit committee, and is a director of Community CPS Australia.
