Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to be able to stand and speak on the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020, which is part of the package this government is delivering on the recommendations of the Hayne royal commission since its report was handed down a couple of years ago.

I know there's a lot of colour and light going on on the opposition benches, a bit of ranting and raving because they're saying, 'Why weren't the bills introduced and legislated earlier?' There was this thing called COVID-19. I'm not sure if you're familiar in it. Early last year there was—and we're still getting to the bottom of the origins, but most people think it came from Wuhan in China—a virus and it distracted the political discussion and the priorities of governments, not just in Australia but all around the world. We had this reprioritisation to say, yes, these sorts of urgent reforms matter, but saving human lives, protecting the Australian community, making sure we had the necessary health systems and making sure we provided the economic support measures to make sure people didn't lose jobs all mattered a bit more.

The confected outrage of those members on the opposition benches falls a bit flat because what we're doing—now that the Treasury has the bandwidth, the government has the bandwidth and, frankly, this parliament has the bandwidth—is getting on with the job so that we can make sure that Australian consumers are protected. The role of financial services is to manage and create the wealth of our great nation, but to do it in alignment with those who own that wealth. Of course, we've had reforms already, and there are many reforms to go. But there are other things that we need to focus on as well as a consequence of the Hayne royal commission.

This legislation is relatively straightforward. It's to make sure that financial advisers' interests are aligned with the interests of the people that they're advising. You would have thought this was self-evident for financial advisers and that, when they clip the ticket because they provide a service which is entirely reasonable and fair, they do it on the basis that they are actually helping the people who are gaining a benefit from their services. Their interests should be in alignment and not in contrast. When fees are being charged—as clearly has occurred with some financial advisers—against the interests of their customers, they are being rorted of their savings and investments because people are using it as an opportunity to mine for fees and their own interests. If financial advisers are doing that, they should be held to account. That's what this legislative proposal goes part way to addressing.

We should never turn a blind eye when we find this happening in other places. As you would be aware, Deputy Speaker, I am the chair of the Standing Committee on Economics. We are running a term-long inquiry at the request of the Treasurer into the implementation of the Hayne royal commission. The member for Dunkley probably wasn't on the committee when we discovered some super funds were also charging members fees without providing a service. The only response from the opposition to this fee-for-no-service moment was to run interference and to distract from what was going on, and we wonder why. It might be because it was being done by their friends in the industry super fund ecosystem. They were actually caught red-handed reactivating low balance inactive accounts—which, by law, should have gone to the Australian Taxation Office—so that they could harvest them for fees and insurance people didn't want or need because it could underwrite their profitability. It is the most despicable thing, in exactly the same way financial advisers have been caught out by the Hayne royal commission. Hayne missed this one and we have done something about it despite the efforts of the opposition. In the end, fees for no service is wrong, and it doesn't matter whether it's a financial adviser or an industry super fund. When they're caught red-handed, they're culpable and we need to make sure we change the law to protect people. This shows a fundamental blind spot of the opposition around financial services. Their interest is not in stopping wrongdoing; their interest is what they can gain from it, like the dodgy financial advisers that this bill is stopping. That's what we discovered in the Economics Committee.

We're also seeing it in their behaviour around so many other issues around financial advice and prioritisation. Just before question time, I drew an explicit contrast between the rhetoric of the Labor Party and the opposition and what they do. I'll repeat it just for clarity: when it comes to Labor, it's always 'them first, you last'. At the last election, Labor said negative gearing cost housing affordability. That was their big narrative. That's what they do. They conned millions of Australians into believing this lie, but they knew it wasn't true. Yesterday in the Nine press, Labor MPs backgrounded that by saying in relation to scrapping negative gearing, 'For the amount of money it raises versus the political pain, it's just not worth it.' Clearly, their only priority is not housing affordability and it's not improving the homeownership rate of young Australians; it's merely their take of your money. Either housing affordability matters but they'd rather have votes, or it doesn't and they just want your cash. It's 'Labor first, you last'.

Now they're doing the same thing with super. Since the 1990s, Labor has championed taking workers' wages to stop them saving a deposit to own their own home. Unsurprisingly, homeownership rates amongst young Australians have declined while Labor has been prioritising super ahead of homeownership. The average age to buy a first home has now blown out to 36. Labor's solution is to double down and make it harder for you, the people of Australia, to save. Labor want a nation of renters because homeownership gets in the way of handing moolah to their mates. Liberals want you to own your future—your security for you and your family. Liberals want a nation of homeowners.

This is not the first time we've had this debate. At the end of the Second World War, most people remember the divide between Chifley's Labor Party and Menzies's Liberal Party as being about bank nationalisation, but go back to the speeches and look at one of the other critical divides. Labor wanted to use federal state housing agreements to create a nation of dependent renters where people were denied the dignity of ownership of their own homes. Menzies was committed, and our party has been committed at every point, to the democratisation of wealth creation and distribution through the power of homeownership. We did it in 1949 and we drew a line in the sand. It's hardly a shock that, for many years after that, the Australian people never forgot the Labor Party's and the opposition's betrayal of Australians' aspirations to own their own home.

Liberals want you to own your future. Super matters but homeownership matters more; it should be 'home first, super second'. The only people who want to obsessively argue against it are the people who have their interests in the till of keeping the super system prioritised ahead of homeownership. That's why it's wrong.

I know that a lot of members of the opposition find it outrageous that someone would dare say that homeownership matters more than super. There's such a con at the heart of their argument. They have no issue with your super being used to invest in build-to-rent housing, so super funds will own housing stock with your money and they will say that you must rent it from them. That is a betrayal of the Australian social contract. It is a disgrace, and they sit there on the other side of the chamber and applaud it along. The idea that you would rent off your own super fund, from your own money, is despicable, but that is where the Australian super system is heading: to create a neo-feudalism at the heart of Australian society, where young Australians, new Australians, migrant workers and low-income workers will be denied their own dream, to serve the interests of super funds and be serfs to their own super, rather than having the dignity, the pride and the ownership they'd have not just of their own home but of this great country.

I know there's a mocking dismissal by members of the opposition, but that is where their priorities sit in the financial services sector: Labor first, you last. They've taken that attitude in the economics committee, they take that attitude in this parliament and they continue to mock and deride the opportunity for young Australians to be able to own their own home. It's a disgrace. They can't see it, because they're blind, because at the heart of these debates they see themselves and their interests, not the opportunities for you, the people of Australia.

So in this piece of legislation we are taking sensible action to make sure that financial advisers don't rip off customers. We've already done the same where we found industry super funds ripping off fund members and those with low-balance accounts, sometimes the most underprivileged low-income Australians. But again the member for Dunkley simply shrugs her shoulders at the rip-offs of industry super against nurses and teachers and those people who've made the effort to be able to save for their own dignity. Now give them the choice, the opportunity to empower themselves. Give them the opportunity to be able to use their savings, their money, their effort and their reward to own their own home. Instead we'll get the sneering arrogance of the opposition in opposing it every step of the way. My response is: bring this fight on, because it should be home first, super second.

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