The draft report of the Productivity Commission titled “How to assess the competitiveness and efficiency of the superannuation system” runs to over 300 pages. Note, this is not the results of an assessment, just how to make an assessment. I wonder how many pages the actual assessment report will have.

However, regardless of its size, I’m not sure how valuable the assessment report will be. Consider this little nugget from page 6: “Product proliferation, high advertising expenditure, competition on irrelevant non-price (non-fee) aspects and high search costs are potentially signs of unhealthy competition.” There you have it – a prejudiced view on what the bureaucracy thinks constitutes unhealthy competition, even before the review starts. And who knew that competition could be divided into “healthy” and “unhealthy”?

What does that statement reveal about the attitude of the assessor?