Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

That is right. And they have to go through that process each year—having to sign a form every single year. You would think that after the government had had the Ripoll inquiry they would take notice of that proposal in this legislation. It was never part of the initial Ripoll inquiry recommendations, and here it is in this legislation.

Thirdly, we have here a retrospective application of additional annual fee disclosure requirements. We think that should be removed. We think the drafting of the best-interest test should be improved, and speakers on our side have outlined that in some detail. This legislation's treatment of the issue of risk insurance inside superannuation has been a confused and ever-changing position on the part of the government that again reflects their chaotic decision making in so many ways. We think that needs to be refined. Again, the Ripoll inquiry did not make any recommendations to ban commissions paid for risk insurance products. Coalition committee members support the banning of conflicted remuneration structures—I was one of those—such as product commissions et cetera. But again, the fact that they had the Ripoll inquiry, the fact they have ignored and gone down another route, you have to ask yourself why? I think the previous speaker on our side, the member for Grey, hit the nail on the head and it was a sensitive point with the member opposite, point which is why it needs to be hammered home: the opt-in provision which I spoke of earlier. The opt-in was not part of the initial Ripoll inquiry recommendations, and in this context it is important to note that the industry super network provided the only submission to the original Ripoll inquiry arguing in favour of opt-in.

Each of these areas I have run through is illustrative of the government's change of position in so many respects and it leads to the final area of proposed amendment and that is the simple proposition, you would think for those who are rushing: that the timetable for implementation is clearly unrealistic in the legislation. Members have argued on this side of the House that the government should have at least aligned the implementation of any changes it proposes to make. We would still hope, as faded a hope it is, that just once after so many policy catastrophes in so many areas on that side of the House, just once, common sense might prevail. If this happens, you would think government backbenchers would say, 'Hey, we are rushing into another policy train wreck here and what we should do is'—and hopefully they would accept our amendments. If you are going to implement major change, and our amendments would improve that, have a realistic time frame and align it with the proposed MySuper changes and implement it in July next year, rather than this year.

What I predict is that the government, after stubbornly ignoring every argument that has been put forward, at the last minute will propose some of their own amendments. That seems to be the way. My colleague the member for Cowper next to me has experienced this so many times. Here we are on that last day of sitting before budget day. The House will sit until 5 pm today, and the government is madly rushing to ram through significant changes that it has not thought through properly—and we will assume the minister responsible is ignorant; but I would not make the claim. I would never make the claim that every single member of the Labor caucus is ignorant. Let me just state for the record that the member opposite said he is ignorant. But, even to help him out, I will disagree with him.

I would not say that every single member of the Labor caucus is ignorant, and they are culpable. Today they will vote for something many of them know will be bad legislation. They will vote for it today and rush it through before budget day. They will do so in the full knowledge that they are following in the footsteps of so many other bad decisions by this government. But we have hope, slight hope, that one thing might happen inside the Labor caucus and that is that someone stands up and says, 'Let's get a policy right'.

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