Media Release

ASFA: Australian Superannuation Loses a Giant

28 September 2020

ASFA: Australian Superannuation Loses a Giant

The Hon. Susan Ryan AO (1942-2020) 

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) has paid tribute to Susan Ryan: politician, feminist, administrator, company director, champion of women and friend to many, who died on the weekend, as one of the great reformers and instigators of Australia’s modern superannuation industry. 

As a Minister in the Hawke Labor government and later as a superannuation industry leader, she championed reforms to end gender and other forms of discrimination in superannuation and more generally. She sponsored and fought for the Sex Discrimination Act, which was passed by the Australian parliament in 1984. It is her signature achievement. 

Doing what is right matters. 

This sometimes came at some personal cost. There were many periods of happiness, but spells of loneliness. As she wrote in her memoirs, Catching the Waves. Life in and out of Politics (Harper Collins, Sydney, 1999), “I am by temperament quite gregarious, but the combination of my gender and my politics meant that the position I occupied most often was that of a shag on a rock.” Her reflections and insights in her book on various political changes and reforms in the 1980s were the most perceptive of any penned by former Hawke Ministers. 

A pioneer in the Women’s Electoral Lobby, then a Senator for the ACT from 1975 to 1988, she was the first woman to hold a Cabinet post in a Labor government. She served as Minister for Education and Youth Affairs, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women and Special Minister of State. 

Post politics, she held various CEO Chair and other important posts. In every instance, improving the lives of others, empathising with the disadvantaged and the picked upon, was a hallmark.

Ryan was CEO of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), 1993-97, then served as President of the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, 2000-7. She was a member of the ASX Corporate Governance Council, 2003-7, and the independent Chair of the IAG & NRMA Superannuation Plan to 2011, the same year she was appointed Australia’s first Age Discrimination Commissioner. 

ASFA Chair Michael Easson said: “Her legacy includes improvements in the lives and financial well-being of millions of Australians. But she would hate anyone to be complacent. There’s more to be done.

The best way we honour her is to rekindle reforms to prevent discrimination and to equalise the situation of women workers, who overall are behind their male counterparts”.

For further information, please contact:
Jacqui Maddock, 0451 949 300.

About ASFA
ASFA is the peak policy, research and advocacy body for Australia’s superannuation industry. It is a not-for-profit, sector-neutral, and non-party political, national organisation. ASFA’s mission is to continuously improve the superannuation system, so all Australians can enjoy a comfortable and dignified retirement.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA

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Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

 

Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

Sessions

Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.