Friday 25 March 2016

Australian Federal Election 2016: third time around and not much has changed


This post is for those who are voting in the Page electorate for the very first time.

Kevin John Hogan’s attempt at biography during his unsuccessful 2010 federal election campaign……

I am married to Karen, we live in Clunes near Lismore and we have three school-age children.
I run my own superannuation consultancy business. I earlier spent seven years teaching at St Mary's High School in Casino, including a period as acting Deputy Principal.
Before moving to the north coast I worked in Sydney for Colonial where I managed a one billion-dollar investment portfolio, and gave daily financial market updates on Sky News.
My community involvement has included an advisory position to Lismore City Council, the vice presidency of the Clunes P&C and my local tennis club; and I have also coached my son Sean's cricket team. [http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/122166/20100821-0037/www.kevinhogan.com.au/index.html]

This was Kevin Hogan during the 2013 federal election campaign which saw him elected as the Member for Page on the NW Far North Coast…..

Born and bred in Regional Australia, Kevin lives with his wife Karen and three children on a property near Lismore.
After completing an Economics degree Kevin spent over ten years in Sydney forging a successful career in finance, working for Colonial for many years.
When the time came to raise a family Kevin and Karen moved back to the Northern Rivers and Karen’s home town of Lismore.
Kevin took up teaching, at St Mary’s High School in Casino, teaching Business Studies and serving, for a time, as Deputy Principal.
He operates a small business and runs a cattle property. Karen works as a registered nurse.
Kevin has always been committed to contributing to his local community. He has served on a local council Wastewater Advisory Committee, been Vice President of his local state primary school P&C, president of the local sports club, and coached junior sporting teams. [http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/122166/20130822-0047/www.kevinhogan.com.au/about-kevin.html]

And this was Kevin Hogan in 2015…….

Federal Member for Page Kevin Hogan MP swapped the trading floor for playground detention when he took up a teaching post in the late 1990s after completing his teaching degree at Southern Cross University.
The former money market and bond trader and his wife, Karen, had decided to relocate from Sydney to her home town of Lismore to raise their children.
"Working in the money markets was a lot of fun but I didn't necessarily feel like I was contributing much to society. I wanted to be of more service. I had this idea that I wanted to be a high school teacher, which was a huge pay cut," Mr Hogan said.
"I did the dip ed (Diploma of Education) at Southern Cross University in 1998, focusing on social sciences, and got a job straight away at St Mary's High School at Casino and worked there for the next eight or nine years teaching the business studies/commerce stream, and also English and religion. It was a lot of fun. I loved the community in Casino."
Mr Hogan said teachers played an important and influential role. "Teaching kids is very special. I ended up doing an economics degree because of my high school economics teacher, who was a great teacher."
He said he enjoyed his time at Southern Cross University.
"The graduate diploma in education at SCU was perfect because it was one year. Other dip eds at the time were 18 months. It meant I was studying the course in Lismore which is where we wanted to live, and our children were able to grow up among our extended family…..
Mr Hogan, a member of the Nationals, has been the federal Member for Page since September 2013. A member of the Finance Select Committee, he brings direct experience working with the Reserve Bank.
"I entered the financial markets in 1985 when deregulation was under way and the Australian dollar had been floated. It was an exciting time. I was managing a multi-million dollar portfolio for Colonial First State, managing staff, and doing a morning Sky News update on what had happened on the financial markets overnight. I was 23 and 24 years of age.
"One of my roles was dealing with the Reserve Bank every day. They influenced the money supply in the banking system by buying and selling securities and back then they would only do it with six or seven organisations and I worked for one called GIO Securities, an official money market dealer. That taught me a lot about how the Reserve Bank worked and how monetary policy worked." [Southern Cross University, 26 November 2015]

While this is Kevin Hogan in 2016…..

Born and bred in Regional Australia, Kevin lives with his wife Karen and three children on a property near Lismore.
After completing an Economics degree Kevin spent over ten years in Sydney forging a successful career in finance, working for Colonial for many years.
When the time came to raise a family Kevin and Karen moved back to the Northern Rivers and Karen’s home town of Lismore.
Kevin took up teaching, at St Mary’s High School in Casino, teaching Business Studies and serving, for a time, as Deputy Principal.
He operated a small business and runs a cattle property. Karen works as a registered nurse.
Kevin has always been committed to contributing to his local community. He has served on a local council Wastewater Advisory Committee, been Vice President of his local state primary school P&C, president of the local sports club, and coached junior sporting teams.
Kevin joined the Nationals because it is the only party solely dedicated to representing regional areas. [www. kevinhogan.com.au/about-kevin, 17 March 2016]

What Kevin is not saying about himself……

Kevin Hogan is always silent on his time as Investment Officer for the Australian Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund which ended when he resigned in September 2008.

He did not include his time sitting on a Trinity property investment group sub-committee, the Investors Advisory Board (IAB), as a voting member representing the interests of Catholic Super until his resignation from that board in September 2008.

The Global Financial Crisis may explain many of the losses on Catholic Super's books in 2008 and Mr. Hogan may have genuinely decided that he didn’t want the constant commute between Sydney and the NSW North Coast, but the fact remains that he was Investment Officer at a time of decidedly poor investment performance, which saw Catholic Super face the prospect of a particular loss when IAB committee members appear to have taken their eye off the ball. 

By 2015 he had also completely changed his potted biography timeline so that the implication is that he was teaching fulltime in 2007-2008 and not working for Catholic Super in Sydney four days a week.

Investment Magazine, 16 September 2008:

The $3.5 billion Catholic Super & Retirement Fund (CSRF) has hired a former Mercer asset consultant, once the principal consultant for Qantas Super, as its new investment officer.
Anne Whittaker will start at the CSRF in October, ending an 18-month stint at the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, where she had been its first senior policy adviser on investments. Whittaker was a principal at Mercer Investment Consulting for 14 years prior to this. At CSRF Whittaker replaces Kevin Hogan, who had been commuting from his Byron Bay home to Sydney and fulfilling the role four days a week. The chief executive of CSRF, Greg Cantor, said the investment officer responsibilities had grown and full-time attention was now required. “Kevin has a young family and a great lifestyle [in Byron Bay] and couldn’t make that commitment, so he resigned and left us a few weeks ago,” Cantor said. Whittaker, who directly managed assets pre-Mercer at organisations such as QBE and GIO, will do everything from identifying potential new managers to the “unglamorous” business of maintaining fee schedules and mandate compliance, Cantor said. “There’s not a big internal investment team here, so there’s no point us having big top-down points of view…It’s about rolling up your sleeves and doing the bottom-up work to get the best out of your managers.” An initial responsibility for Whittaker will be assisting a property review, in consultation with some old colleagues at Mercer, CSRF’s long-time principal asset consultant, as well as ‘secondary’ consultant Frontier. Whittaker’s move from ASFA to CSRF mirrors that made by Sue Willems in March this year. The erstwhile fund secretary of NGS Super left the Association, where she had been a senior policy advisor, to join CSRF in the newly-created role of risk & compliance manager.

I&T News,  26 October 2009:

Investors with $850 million invested in Trinity Funds Management products have appointed KPMG to investigate the governance changes underway at the manager before deciding whether to put their mandates out to tender.
KPMG is preparing to undertake the investigation, which gives Trinity about three months to earn the confidence of the investors before they decide to stay with the manager or terminate their mandates in the wake of the success fee scandal that saw lobbyist Ross Daley earn $1 million for, he claims, helping secure a $100 million mandate from Sunsuper.
David Asplin, general manager – institutional funds management at Trinity, said the manager was working “very co-operatively” with the investors’ representative committee (IRC), “given that they constitute a large percentage of our external investments”.
The IRC, an independent body representing investors in Trinity’s unlisted funds, was formed in late July after the Investors Advisory Board (IAB), a sub-committee within Trinity, dissolved.
The six-member IAB was set up in mid-2008 to represent investors in Trinity funds, and included John Coombe, executive director of JANA; Megan Chan, portfolio manager with Sunsuper; Kevin Hogan, investment officer of Catholic Super; and Craig Stevens, chief executive officer of Austsafe.
It is understood that KPMG was appointed by the IRC to investigate the governance changes taking place at Trinity following the Daley success fee scandal.

Since 2013 Kevin Hogan has in the House of Representatives:

voted for


voted against


[See https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/page/kevin_hogan for an expanded list of his voting record]

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