Australia names ex-treasurer to Future Fund

Costello will join the Future Fund's board of guardians when current member John Paterson's term expires on Dec. 17, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said today in a statement.

Treasurer for almost 11 years in former Prime Minister John Howard's coalition government of Liberal and National party lawmakers, Costello is one of several high-profile political rivals appointed by Kevin Rudd's Labor government since winning office two years ago. Rudd made former opposition leader Brendan Nelson an envoy to the European Union in September and last year named Tim Fischer, a former deputy prime minister, as ambassador to the Holy See.

“I have always said that I believe that the national interest demands that when people retire from active political life we should draw on all the nation's talents, whatever political tradition they come from,” Rudd told reporters today in Canberra.

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said while the move is “certainly a very good appointment” as Costello established the fund in 2006, it reveals Rudd's “hypocrisy” on economic issues.

“It wasn't that long ago that Rudd was saying the Liberal Party's economic policies had brought the world to the “edge of an abyss,” Turnbull told Channel Ten's Meet the Press program today. “And so here he is appointing the No. 1 neo-Liberal free market extremist to the board of the Future Fund.”

The appointment was also questioned by former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, who described Costello as a “policy bum,” according to a report in today's Australian newspaper.

“The prime minister's goodie two-shoes approach of appointing former opponents of the Labor party to important public jobs is no substitute for thoughtful and mature reflection” on filling senior positions, said Keating, whose government lost office in a federal election won by Howard and Costello in 1996.

The Future Fund was established to cover the cost of retiring lawmakers, judges and public servants. Its assets stood at A$64.3 billion (US$58.8 billion) at Sept. 30, according to a fund update released on Oct. 19.

The fund's board of guardians has seven members led by Chairman David Murray, a former Commonwealth Bank of Australia chief executive officer.

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