The Howard Government’s decision to allow self-managed super funds (SMSFs) to leverage into property and other investments was a mistake.
Specifically, it allowed SMSFs to be turned into speculative vehicles rather than savings vehicles, in turn dramatically increasing the riskiness of Australia’s retirement savings and financial system, further inflating Australian house prices, and transferring some of the downside risk to taxpayers, who of course backstop the retirement system via the Aged Pension.
