AOFM leadership and capability concerns

Question

Senator SHARMA: I'm conscious that it was the current AOFM leadership that made some of the most experienced crisis officials redundant as part of their restructure. Dr Debelle identifies that as a risk or a vulnerability for the organisation. What confidence do you or Treasury have in the current leadership of the AOFM to manage effectively in a crisis or deal with more challenging debt market conditions, given the loss of experience and given this has happened under a leadership that's overseen not only plummeting staff morale but also the loss of some of the most experienced employees at the AOFM? What is your level of confidence? Mr White: I'd answer like this. The review points out that the restructure that was put in place, the change in structure in having a deputy CEO and a chief operating officer and those sorts of things were sensible changes in the structure of the organisation; that the organisation as a whole, at least in a BAU situation, can do its job perfectly happily; and that the debt program has been managed well. It then says, as you said, that it could possibly be in better shape to do things in times of financial stress and possibly it needs some more expertise. As you said, it says that some of that expertise is no longer in the organisation that was there before. To me, that seems like we have an organisation and management who are thinking sensibly about the way forward. They've gone down a path that our reviewer has said we should think really carefully about, and there is probably something to do, but that doesn't mean we don't have confidence in the management of the AOFM to do their job and manage their organisation. Senator SHARMA: A double negative! Mr White: We've got the names of the people on the board. It's actually five, not four. There is Steve Knight, Anne Anderson, Bill Whitford, David Bennett and Curt Zuber. They're all people who've had pretty extensive experience on financial markets. We try to find people who are not actively in the financial markets anymore, because of conflict of interest issues, but they all have long experience in various parts of the financial markets in Australia. Senator SHARMA: Could I ask you to either table that or provide it in response to a question on notice. Mr White: Yes, we could easily provide that somehow. We'll work it out.

Answer

See attached response.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000452 BET079 - AOFM leadership and capability concerns.pdf (opens in a new tab)