Australia’s future should be one without the Future Fund. While created for a virtuous purpose, the Future Fund has become a significant distortion to Australian public policy and public finances. Operating today in an environment of inflation, higher interest rates, and increasingly volatile investment markets, now is the time to liquidate the Future Fund’s assets to pay down debt.

Originally established in 2006, the Future Fund’s purpose was to finance the Commonwealth’s unfunded superannuation liabilities by 2020. Evidencing however Milton Friedman’s observation that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program”, 18 years later and three years beyond its objective date, the Future Fund shows no sign of being retired.