An Uncertain Future

About the author

Daryl Dixon is the executive chairman of Dixon Advisory and Superannuation Services. Daryl is one of Australia’s foremost investment experts and a well-known writer and consultant. He has provided trusted advice to thousands of personal clients for more than 25 years and is an acknowledged expert in the areas of tax, superannuation (including public sector superannuation), social security and investments. He has also been a successful investor for more than 40 years.

Daryl is the author of numerous newspaper articles on investment and superannuation and writes regularly for the Canberra Times, the Public Sector Informant, Smart Investor magazine and the Australian. He has written numerous books on superannuation and financial topics include Securing Your Superannuation Future (2012), a guide to establishing and running a self managed super fund, and Super Strategies for the 21st Century (2000), a detailed explanation of Australia’s complex superannuation system and strategies to make the most of the benefits and avoid the traps. He also wrote An Independent Guide to The New Commonwealth Super Scheme: The New and Old Schemes Compared (1990) to help public servants decide whether to join what was then a new version of the CSS.

Before establishing his own consulting firm, Daryl worked in the International Monetary Fund, the Treasury, the Department of Finance and, as head of, the former Social Welfare Policy Secretariat on major policy issues. He has worked as a consultant for a variety of government bodies and undertaken a large number of consultancies for diverse organisations covering the public, private and voluntary not for profit sections of the economy.

Daryl has a Bachelor of Arts degree with first class honours, majoring in economics from the University of Queensland. He won the Shell Scholarship, allowing him to complete a Master of Arts, majoring in economics, also with first class honours, from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Daryl has lectured in economics, public finance and taxation theory at the Australian National University and the University of Calgary, Canada.

Background

Over the past two years, I have become concerned that the UniSuper Defined Benefit (DBD) fund is putting the retirement benefits of all its members at risk and I’ve argued for the need for fundamental and long-overdue reforms.

Among my greatest concerns is that all the universities, as employers, use the DBD as their default super fund for all new full-time employees even when, unlike other defined benefit funds, the accrual of benefits favours older employees.

Furthermore, all employees have no