Cormann wins in landslide … now for the election!

The tiny municipality of Eupen in the Belgian province of Liège may have just 20,000 residents but it is one of their own that Professional Planner Online readers would like to see as Australia’s next Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation.

Recently described by SPAA National Conference MC Andrew Klein as the most famous Belgian in the world after Jean-Claude van Damme, tennis player Kim Clijsters, “the bloke who invented Tintin*” and musician Gotye, Mathias Hubert Paul Cormann garnered 77 per cent of the vote as preferred candidate for the top job.

Just 5 per cent said they would like to see incumbent Minister Bill Shorten stay in the role, with 18 per cent rejecting both.

Few can dispute the 42-year old Cormann’s ability to overcome obstacles and his is a meteoric rise given that he only learnt to speak English in 1993 and worked as a gardener when he arrived in Perth to settle in 1996 – his law degree from the Flemish speaking Catholic University of Louvain not being recognised.

However, the blow in has ruffled some feathers along the way, most notably when winning pre-selection to replace West Australian Senator Ross Lightfoot on the Liberal Party’s Senate ticket in 2007.

At the time, Lightfoot announced his resignation on the ABC’s Stateline program and left few doubts as to his opinion of the ambitious Belgian.

“I think that more appropriate people have served the party longer, who are more appropriate with respect to family values, and who have a track record that’s easily and clearly scrutinised,” he said in a veiled reference to young-gun Cormann who had drawn strong support for pre-selection from within the party.

Lightfoot, of course, was no stranger to controversy himself, being involved in an alleged punch-up with a fellow Liberal, Phil Lockyer, and supporting Western Australia’s secession from the rest of the country.

Track record

If Cormann (right) lacks in experience, he can’t be accused of letting this hold him back and has been one of the opposition’s most effective attack dogs on superannuation and the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms.

He was at it again this week, accusing the current Labor government of having a terrible track record on superannuation and attacking his opposite number.

“Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan are desperate for more cash to pay for their wasteful spending and for the failure of their mining tax,” he said in a statement.

“They think Australians doing the right thing by saving more for their retirement are soft targets for more Labor tax increases. Meanwhile Bill Shorten is missing in action on super.

“Is it because he’s too weak to resist Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan or because he doesn’t care?

“Or is it because he is too busy trying to secure his own political future?”

Increasingly, though, it is Cormann’s own political ambitions that will be subject to scrutiny and it would appear that no office is too high if financial advisers have their way.

* Tintin was created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name of Hergé.