Chris Pearce (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

The committee also heard from the Investment and Financial Services Association, who stated that regulation should exist only to fill in the detail and that the law itself should have the basic requirements within. IFSA held that such basic requirements must exist in order to provide direction and guidance to the detail. And I am sorry that the member for Denison is getting a headache, but he will have some empathy with the industry and the financial markets, because this bill will give them a headache.

Most damning, IFSA went on to state on the public record that the disclosure regime is the very structure which must be in the legislation for certainty’s sake. This issue of no detail being in the schedule is particularly highlighted when one refers to the government’s own explanatory memorandum. In the explanatory memorandum it says:

The amount of the compliance cost impact will be determined by the details to be prescribed through Regulations.  As such, it is not possible to quantify the costs until the Regulations are made.

So there you have it for all to see: this government, because it has not done the work required, is admitting openly that it has no idea of the cost implications because it has no idea what it wants to do in terms of the important—indeed, the incredibly important—implementation and practical details of this requirement.

One does have to ask the question: why has the government decided to present only a skeleton schedule, devoid of detail and substance, after it has had so much time to do the work and to get it right upfront in the legislation? Why would the government not want to detail the implementation requirements and details in the main legislation, thereby providing absolute certainty and clarity to the market? Clearly, the answers to these questions are because the government does not know what it wants to do, it has not done the work required and it simply just wants to say that it has done something for the sake of having said it has done something.

The participants in the market in this country want certainty. They do not want requirements to change at the whim of a government long on rhetoric but short on substance. If schedule 3 as it currently stands is not omitted, it will only cause instability in the marketplace, and I am sure the member for Maribyrnong does not want to create instability in the marketplace. The market needs certainty, not ambiguity. It would be negligent of any opposition to not highlight and draw attention to such an inept schedule. Again, the opposition wants the government to do the work that needs to be done to provide certainty and substance to the market and then present it to the parliament for consideration. Our amendment will allow the government to achieve the aims of schedules 1 and 2 as our amendment, if passed, will allow schedules 1 and 2 to become the bill. Our amendment also provides the government with yet another opportunity to get schedule 3 right, an opportunity to actually work out what it wants to do and to articulate this upfront in the main legislation and to represent it to the parliament for consideration.

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