Wayne Swan

Inside, the room is packed with regulators, advocates and banking and finance types.

Former treasurer Wayne Swan, now chair of CBUS, is a few tables over.

It's a real who's who of the superannuation world.

After a quick meal, the room settles down and the cameras start recording.

Oh yeah.

Like you only have to see some of the more recent incumbents like Wayne Swan and Josh Frydenberg.

Wayne Swan copped the global financial crisis and Josh Frydenberg copped a pandemic.

I was deeply concerned about what could happen to Australia if we didn't take and put in place very substantial policy actions which would cushion our economy from this tsunami.

In Australia, Treasury is forecasting GDP to fall by over 10% in the June quarter, which would represent our biggest fall on record.

And that brings us back to this question of what is the country's growth agenda? I've had several interviews this week, including with Gough Whitlam's biographer, Troy Bramston, who says the government doesn't have enough of a growth agenda.

You know, I was chatting with Wayne Swan last week.

He says, you know, there's no inclusion without growth.

Tim Wilson, he takes a different tack, but it all comes back to this.

Is

there someone that's been...

Look, a mentor and friend was Wayne Swann.

Right.

Former Federal Treasurer.

We, we used to-

... like Wayne Swan or in the current government?

W- w- we used to, Simon.

It, it used to be that the federal government used to have a body that would limit how much the states could borrow, and I don't know when we got rid of it, but, uh, it, it used to be the case that the states couldn't borrow above a certain amount without the federal government guaranteeing it.

Mm.

But I th- I actually bracket him more with, say, Wayne Swan.

Yeah.

In terms of the fact really-

Well, Wayne Swan did the GFC.

He had a GFC, really difficult situ- situation.

And in Swan's case, we had, like, we hadn't seen a financial crisis-

They're, they're out of circulation.