Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Or the back of a postcard. Send it in by postcard. Why not send it in by postcard? Why not just make a submission? 'Wish you were here. Beautiful sunshine on the front. My serious concerns about watering down consumer protections on the back. My serious concerns about the fact that you are going to make it easier for me to have a financial advice service provided to me that does not protect my best interests on the back.' That was of course a terrible process, and it was aimed at preventing people having the opportunity to be consulted about these future of financial advice wind backs. Popping it through by regulation was, as I said, not appropriate in the circumstances. Really, if the government is not confident in its ability to negotiate with crossbenchers, perhaps the thing to do would be to learn to negotiate with crossbenchers, not sneak important changes through in regulations.

We know that the government has long been opposed to protecting consumers, because they are much more interested in backing the interests of the top end of town. That is just what a Liberal government is really for. If we consider their record, as I said at the commencement of my remarks, it took Labor to introduce comprehensive consumer protection laws in the form of the Trade Practices Act 1974. We have always had consumer protection front and centre in our concerns about what government can do.

Of course, the lessons learned from the global financial crisis would not be lost on anyone here. It is not appropriate to throw up your hands and say, 'Let the financial services sector regulate itself.' That is not the appropriate approach. Of course there should be appropriate, measured regulation to protect the interests of consumers and to protect the interests of all of us in having a functioning financial sector that the community, the sector and industry can all have confidence in. That is what the future of financial advice laws were all about. They were all about opportunities for building confidence in our financial services sector and ensuring that those mums and dads, those grandparents who are relying on the financial advice they are seeking from professional advisers, could rest assured that those advisers were acting squarely in their best interests, to avoid conflict, to avoid the possibility that the adviser's interests or the adviser's employer's interests would be put ahead of the consumer's. These protections are all about ensuring that consumers could have that confidence in making sure that an adviser would always be acting in their best interest.

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