“Then the GFC hit. If anything saved the Prime Minister’s bacon it was the GFC,” Mackay said.

With the recent “surge” in activity, culminating in some flat, rather than increasing, unemployment figures last month, there is now a “fragile hope” that the worst is over. But there is still a lot of confusion because we were “promised” a recession but did not get one. The hope is being tempered by the new spirit of caution and conservatism.

For the superannuation industry, the big and obvious takeaway from all this goes back to Michael Dwyer’s observation at the conference. Maybe, people had little or no reason to shift super funds up until the late 1990s when it became easier to do so. And then we entered the period of disengagement. Now, in 2009, we have the dual impact of the new period of engagement coupled with higher account balances and recent performance problems.

The analogy with bank accounts may not be all that strong, either. From a customer’s viewpoint, banks just give a service, which is difficult to measure, and a rate of interest which is not a lot different from their competitors. Super funds, on the other hand, produce an easily comparable investment performance figure (at a less-easily comparable level of risk) with a much greater dispersion between top and bottom.