Paul Costello, general manager of the $52 billion Future Fund, has said the fund will vote proxies for its shareholdings once it starts to invest.

“We think it’s appropriate to vote our shares,” Costello said in an interview with ABC’s Inside Business on the weekend. Initially the Future Fund will delegate responsibility for voting shares to fund managers but will develop its own policy over time. “But before too much longer we’ll be running our own policy and bringing that back in-house and co-ordinating that ourselves,” Costello told Alan Kohler. Will Hetherton, Future Fund head of communications would not comment further on the fund’s policy regarding proxies. Costello also confirmed that the fund intended to start making investments before the end of this financial year but would not make those investment decisions public. The investment strategy, and investment activity by the fund, will be made public in its annual report which is due to be released after August, according to Hetherton. The Future Fund currently holds over $42 billion in cash, which is sitting with the Reserve Bank of Australia, and almost $10 billion in Telstra shares.