Hume has been hanging with the shoeless one

Outsider really wonders whether the “barefoot investor”, Scott Pape, is really barefoot given his book sales and the spotter’s fee he is probably owed by a particular superannuation fund.

And it is on this basis, that Outsider also wonders whether the still somewhat shiny and new Assistant Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology, Senator Jane Hume, fully understands just how some people in the financial advice community feel about Pape.

You see it has been suggested that by referencing the performance of particular superannuation funds in his barefoot tome, Pape has helped drive inflows into those funds notwithstanding the fact that, as we all know, past performance is no guide to future performance.

But Outsider knows never to stand in the way of a minister and a photo opportunity and so notes Hume’s recent tweet that she was hanging with Pape and his “gorgeous wife Liz talking to kids, financial literacy in schools, empowering families and changing lives”.

It will be interesting to see how this tacit ministerial endorsement impacts book sales, not to say the inflows into a particular superannuation fund, and Outsider suspects that any interest the Australian Securities and Investments Commission may have had in the provision of product advice has ended up in a bottom drawer.