Your morning Briefing: Super fee rip-offs revealed
Hello readers and welcome to your two-minute digest of the day’s top stories.
Hello readers and welcome to your two-minute digest of what’s making news this morning.
Super rip-offs revealed
Australians are being ripped off by super fund trustees “surrounded by temptation” to do the wrong thing with the $2.6 trillion retirement savings pile, while regulators are failing to search out and punish bad behaviour, the banks royal commission has heard. In one example of fee gouging outlined at the royal commission yesterday, NAB charged a customer of its MLC division an array of fees that gobbled up $892.20 of $1101.95 earned from a year-long investment in the simplest option available, cash.
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Husar’s $570 Comcar jaunt
Federal Labor MP Emma Husar clocked up a $570 taxpayer-funded Comcar bill for a trip from her home in Sydney’s west to catch an interstate flight by allegedly having her driver wait for hours in the city while she attended a breakfast fundraiser and Bill Shorten policy launch. The bill, more than four times the usual cost of a direct Comcar trip to Sydney airport, was incurred in March on the day Ms Husar flew to Queensland for official business, and to attend a Bruno Mars concert with a friend.
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Lucy Turnbull’s nephew in coke bust
The nephew of the Prime Minister’s wife — a former NSW Liberal minister’s staffer — has been arrested by police for being in possession of cocaine in Sydney’s CBD. Harry Hughes, the nephew of Lucy Turnbull, who until last October worked for Planning Minister Anthony Roberts, was arrested by undercover detectives at Bar Mordeo, an establishment frequented by NSW government staffers, last month. It is understood police will allege Mr Hughes, 23, was found with 0.7g of cocaine.
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‘Hothouse’ Earth
A two-degree rise in global temperatures could spark a “Hothouse Earth” cascade of feedbacks with terrible consequences for ecosystems, society and economies, according to an alarming new paper lead-authored by Climate Council scientist Will Steffen. The international paper, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says “a fundamental reorientation of human values, equity, behaviour, institutions, economies, and technologies” is required.
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Punter turns pro
Life after cricket just got a bit richer for former Australia captain Ricky Ponting, reveals Margin Call. Company records obtained by Margin Call show the son of Tasmania has joined the registry of online gambling outfit CrownBet Holdings. His transformation from Punter to bookie is complete. In recent weeks, Ponting has been given a 1 per cent stake in the outfit. The filings give the stake a paper value of $1.4 million.
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‘Cops should charge Gaff’
The laws of the land do not stop at the boundary line of a football oval, but you would be forgiven for thinking that they did. If West Coast’s Andrew Gaff had been wearing an Eagles scarf and sitting on the wing of the Perth Stadium when he hit Fremantle’s Andrew Bradshaw, he would have been dragged out the back, driven from the ground in a divi van and almost certainly charged on the spot, writes Peter Lalor.
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Clement’s view