Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, I find that your government is all hypocrisy and no democracy, and I am sure a lot of members of the public agree. I will take that interjection.

The association's demands are not unreasonable. Any reforms in this area must find the right balance between suitable levels of consumer protection and the need to safeguard the ongoing accessibility, affordability and availability of high-quality financial advice. This needs to happen not just in metropolitan areas but also in regional Australia. Labor has failed to accomplish an appropriate balance with FoFA because it did not meet its own internal process requirements around best practice regulation. There is nothing surprising there. The government falls short in so many areas. It probably thinks, 'Why should financial reform be any different to any other policy area?'

Labor's mismanagement of this legislation was exposed by the damning assessment of the FoFA proposals by the government's own Office of Best Practice Regulation. How utterly embarrassing for this government. This government has been embarrassed so many times in recent weeks and months. The trouble is it is always the voters—the people who are paying this government's way with their hard-earned taxes—who are being caught out, being penalised. These Labor reforms are just another example of that. They are a sad and terrible indictment, given the complexity and associated costs of the proposed changes, especially the highly controversial and contentious aspects of these bills.

There is no precedent in the world for introducing the sort of additional red tape which will follow the government's opt-in proposal. There is no precedent in the whole wide world. But have we not heard that before? To my mind, it sounds similar to the Clean Energy Bill—the carbon tax—where Australia will set the benchmark and our citizens will be poorer because of it. We hear all the time that it is a carbon pricing mechanism. I beg to differ; it is a tax. The people out there know that it is a tax and Labor in here know it is a tax, but they refuse to call it what it is. It is not carbon pricing; it is a tax.

The coalition has made 16 recommendations—reasoned, well thought out, industry backed proposals—as to how the current FoFA amendments can be improved and strengthened. The 16 suggestions are consistent with those in the dissenting report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. They make good sense. They will help customers, Mr and Mrs Average, who use financial advisers to help them with their savings and investments in these challenging times. They will help the industry, which plays such an important role in Australian society today. The Labor government just needs to take them on board.

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