The superannuation sector will deal with the fifth government minister to oversee the area since late 2013, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison announcing Victorian Senator Jane Hume as Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Finance.
Hume will be part of the assistant ministry, while Victorian MP Michael Sukkar will join the outer ministry as Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing.
Liberal Party deputy leader Josh Frydenberg will remain as Treasurer and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann will also retain his role, with both Frydenberg and Cormann being part of Morrison’s 23-member cabinet.
Sukkar has previously held roles in government as Assistant Minister to the Treasurer, from early 2017 to mid-2018 under Malcom Turnbull, but this is the first ministerial position for Hume, who entered the Senate at the 2016 federal election.
Hume, however, has worked in financial services, holding roles as an investment research manager and then private banker with NAB in the late 1990s, as a senior manager with Rothschild Australia in the early 2000s and then as a vice-president at Deutsche Bank. Her most recent role before entering parliament was as senior strategic policy adviser with AustralianSuper from 2015 to 2016.
Meanwhile opposition leader Anthony Albanese has announced Stephen Jones, a former lawyer and union organiser, will take on the role of Labor’s financial services spokesman.
In addition Jones will be assistant treasury spokesman.
In the first role, he succeeds Claire O’Neil, who held the post in the second Shorten shadow ministry, and in the second role he succeeds Andrew Leigh.
Matt Thistlethwaite has been named as assistant financial services spokesman, having previously been assistant treasury spokesman under Bill Shorten.
Albanese named Jim Chalmers as treasury spokesman, replacing Chris Bowen in the role. Chalmers was the ALP’s financial services and superannuation spokesman from October 2015 to July 2016 and then finance spokesman from July 2016 until the current appointment.
He is succeeded in the latter role by Senator Katy Gallagher, who was Labor’s small business and financial services spokeswoman from July 2016 to December 2017, at which time she was forced to leave parliament due to a High Court decision that found she was not an Australian citizen when elected.
''