Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The government's amendment to the start date for the legislation proposes a soft start date of 1 July 2012 with a hard start date of 1 July 2013. We view this as a poor outcome for both consumers and advisers. It will create enormous confusion and uncertainty, like everything else this government do. It is absurd to expect people to be in a position to implement radical changes to their existing business practices, including significant and costly systems changes, in—how many days are there until 1 July?

Mr Shorten interjecting—

There you go! Even if people did want to comply with the FOFA requirements from 1 July 2012, it would be impossible to do so in practice. There are no regulations in place, we have no indication as to when the necessary regulations will be made, ASIC is unlikely to issue guidance notes on many aspects of FOFA until the end of 2012 at the very earliest (Extension of time granted)and the code of conduct required for the government's latest version of opt-in will not be in place until sometime in 2013. How can people be expected to comply with regulations, ASIC guidance notes and a code of conduct which will not be in existence on 1 July 2012 or for some time after that? What is worse, given the retrospective nature of parts of this legislation, compliance becomes even more difficult. Once again the Labor government and the minister at the table have acted far too slowly to implement some very major changes, and they have been caught short.

Mr Shorten interjecting—

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