Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank for the member for Hawke for his comments. It's interesting to reflect that it's only in the last couple of years that those opposite have decided that they have some affinity with financial advisers. There have been many times over the years when I've stood in this place, those opposite having spoken very poorly of financial advisers and the professional advice that they have provided. I and the coalition support the amendments in this bill to improve the operation of the education standards, as well as the First Home Super Savers scheme, which those opposite, from memory, didn't support when they were in opposition. I find it interesting that they have now had a change of heart.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill, contains four schedules. As I noted, the coalition will be supporting this bill. Many of the changes in this bill continue the work of the former coalition government. In supporting this bill, we take the opportunity to also reflect that there are many other issues that this government is failing to address through this legislation that it has the opportunity to address if it wishes to do so.

Across the board, we're seeing higher inflation, rising mortgage payments, rising prices at the checkout and rising energy bills, to name just a few, but none of those are being addressed by those opposite. These fundamental challenges that are being faced by Australians each and every day are not being dealt with.

Going to the substance of the bill, schedule 1 introduces new rules to prohibit schemes that are designed to avoid the application of product intervention orders made under part 7.9A of the Corporations Act 2001 in relation to a credit facility. We should always be looking to upgrade and amend our laws to deal with instances where people are looking to circumvent those laws in ways that will end up as poor outcomes for consumers and the Australian people. It is entirely proper that this be done.

Schedule 3 of the bill amends the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001, the Corporations Act 2001 and the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to facilitate competition in the provision of clearing and settlement services for cash equities traded in Australia. If we can introduce competition into a sector that at the moment is controlled by one entity, we hope that we get better quality of services and, importantly, cheaper prices for those who are looking to transact on our share markets.

To speak to schedule 2 and schedule 4 in particular, it is important that here in Australia we have a strong financial services sector. It remains a bedrock of our economy. That is important, because it gives people confidence that our banks and our financial institutions are strong and secure. It has been remarkably strong over the past decade and has served us fairly well. Schedule 2 focuses on financial advisors. We have always said, as a coalition, that we want to see Australians have access to high-quality, affordable financial advice. There has been much regulation through this place over the past decade that has sought to deliver that for Australian consumers and those seeking financial advice. With the effluxion of time, we have seen, sadly, an erosion in the number of advisers in the advice space, and many of those older advisers have sought to retire rather than undertake the additional study and other requirements to come up to the new standards that were put in place.

Schedule 2 of this bill, I think, makes an important change to those education requirements that reflects the experience of those advisers who have been in the industry for more than 10 years and have a clean disciplinary record. I have said in this place previously—and for those here who may not be aware, I had a previous life in the financial advice space prior to coming into this place—there are many, many professional advisers who have been in the industry for a long time. You do not spend 30 years in this industry and build a client base over that time—some advisors have had the same clients for 30 years and are now providing advice to the children and grandchildren of some of those initial clients—without providing a professional service and professional care to their clients. For a lot of time in this place we have spoken about the product advice that advisers provide, and a lot of the regulation has been built on that basis. But that fails to recognise the true value of financial advice.

The greatest part of professional financial advice is not necessarily the product advice; it is actually the strategic advice that is provided to clients on how to set up their affairs and arrange their affairs to maximise the value of what they have and to be able to build on that. What this bill in essence recognises, in recognising the value of that experience of those advisers who have been in the industry for more than 10 years and have a clean disciplinary record, is the value of that strategic advice and the knowledge that they have built over many years. They have seen the ups and downs in the share market. They have seen the ups and downs in the property market. They have seen the ups and downs in various other markets. They have seen the changes in regulation for superannuation and a whole bunch of other things over that time. Consequently, that knowledge is now being recognised through this change to the standards, and I fully support, as does the coalition, these changes.

But the other part of unfinished work, and this was a review that was commenced under the previous coalition government, is Michelle Levy's quality of advice review. We have seen the government acknowledge that they are going to implement some of the recommendations. But we on this side call on the government to implement all of the recommendations. The coalition has accepted all of those in principle. But it is interesting that the ones that the government has sought to implement will benefit superannuation funds over other financial institutions and organisations. I find it interesting that the government chose to announce the acceptance of these particular recommendations at a private invitation-only breakfast with Industry SuperFunds Australia. Yet, at the same time, we see in recent media reports that those very same super funds who were invited to that breakfast and who are now being given these additional powers to provide advice at the expense of other financial institutions are some of the very funds that are not obeying the law at this point in time.

The law requires, if somebody wants to withdraw their funds or roll over their funds, that rollover requests must not take more than five days. But we are seeing reports that they are taking up to 30 days. I don't see the government addressing that particular issue in this bill. In fact, they are giving superannuation funds more access to advice, yet the existing funds can't comply with the law as it sits today. I find that passing strange that those issues, where people's money, Australian's money, in their superannuation fund is not released within the timetable specified by the law.

In welcoming these reforms to the education standards, we would also like to see further work done on the rest of Michelle Levy's recommendations to ensure there is an even playing field right across the financial services space. These stream 1 reforms are welcome, but the narrow acceptance of the medium-term agenda will leave Australians with less access to financial advice, and advisers working outside the superannuation system will be left in the cold. The response from the Levy quality of advice review is an opportunity to drive better outcomes for Australians across retirement, wealth creation and a whole range of other personal financial matters, and there are things in that review which I think are critical to achieving that, if we are genuine about wanting to reduce the cost of financial advice. According to a recent survey by the ASX, an important reason why people are not seeking financial advice is the cost.

This survey says that a further 29 per cent of Australians plan to seek advice in the coming year, but a lot of them are not interested in seeing an adviser because of the cost. They are willing to pay somewhere around $1,200 for advice but a financial plan, today, is something like $3,300. The rest of the outstanding Quality of Advice Review recommendations go towards providing advisers the opportunity to reduce the cost of providing advice to Australians who wish to seek it. We call on the government to pursue the implementation of the remainder of the Quality of Advice Review recommendations, and we'll work with the government in that space.

Lastly, I'll touch on the First Home Super Saver Scheme, which was a scheme introduced by the former coalition government. We welcome these changes, to make it more flexible, and the grandfathering going back to 1 July 2018 to allow people who maybe weren't able to benefit from those changes to have applications reassessed.

But, yet again, we are not seeing in this bill, or any of the bills that are before the House at the moment, any efforts by the government to address the cost-of-living issues that are facing everyday Australians. We also call on the government to deal with those issues, because they are impacting on people's lives and on businesses. The government's own budget papers acknowledged that the employment rate will go up and economic growth will fall. The government's budget papers planned for a cash rate of 3.85 per cent and it's already 4.1 per cent. None of those economic issues facing everyday Australians are being dealt with in this bill, and, given that, it is more important than ever that Australians have the capacity to seek affordable financial advice, to be able make changes to their arrangements to deal with the issues that are facing them, which this government refuses to deal with.

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