Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad he threw that one in. FoFA is the great catch in all this. That is in the middle of those 50,000 empty pages of nothing that will fan the flames and create lots of smoke. We will see lots of smoke coming out of those guys over there on the other side but not too much that is real except when it going to hurt people. I am not going to go into all the details of FoFA here, but, simply, FoFA is about professionalising and lifting the standards in the financial services sector, something that they have been asking for for two decades. They want the standards lifted. They want to be professional. They want to be recognised as professional. We want to help them do it.

The other thing to note here is that we want to protect consumers. If you are a retiree or you are saving for your financial independence at retirement, you need a little protection, a little regulation and a little law. Whether you are young or old, or in the middle, it does not matter. There are scams out of there and unfortunately there are people who will do the wrong thing. That is why we need good, consistent and strong consumer protection laws when it comes to financial advice. Why? Because (a) you might not know that it is happening to you (b) by the time you find out, it is too late, and (c) if you lose your life savings, you need a little help. We have seen $4 billion wiped off the funds and life savings of pensioners following the Storm collapse and Westpoint and Trio—there is a list as long as your arm, the so-called non-criminals that some of the members on the other side seem to want to protect. I do not know why they want to protect those guys, some of whom have gone to jail for ripping off pensioners. I will take the side of pensioners any day. I will take the side of people saving for their retirement any day. I can tell you that those on the other side of this House do not have too many friends. When it comes to it, National Seniors are against them and everybody is lining up, as well as all the consumer groups and even big business—and those opposite are the friends of big business; they are in their pockets.

People will understand that this is the government of insiders. They are the great insider traders of government. They are inside big business. They are inside cabinet. They are inside the Liberal Party. They are insiders. They do not care about consumers. They do not care about retirees. They do not care about ordinary folk. When they are in the middle and they get an opportunity to jump, they ask: 'Which way will I jump? Do I side with big business in making sure they get millions of dollars of extra fees or do I side with ordinary people? Do I go for the hard lift? Do I do the hard work, not just the stunts on repeal day, or do I do the good stuff?' I will tell you where the Labor Party will always be. Regardless of the popularity and regardless of the cost, we will side with consumers. We will side with senior Australians. We will protect their life savings. We will stand there for them. We will be there for the workers, moving their superannuation minimum from nine per cent to 12 per cent. We will do all that regardless of where we end up politically. We will do all that and we will continue to do that. We are not going to jump into bed with big business just because it suits somebody's particular agenda. In putting in place the standard business reporting which pulls together business activity statements, tax file numbers, declarations and a whole range of things, we will do the heavy lifting. We are the ones who will stand up for small business. We are the ones who will stand up for medium-sized enterprises. We will stand up for consumers when those opposite will not.

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