Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, financial literacy falls into my portfolio area and I believe it is one of the most important areas of work for me. The government's National Financial Literacy Strategy aimed at giving people the skills to take control of their finances, make the most of opportunities and attain their financial goals while also protecting themselves from poor decision making. A key plank of the National Financial Literacy Strategy is the MoneySmart program run by ASIC. The MoneySmart website aims to help people make financial decisions that improve their lives. MoneySmart provides not just information and tools, but also the motivation to take action. It takes visitors from simply acquiring knowledge to setting goals and implementing those goals themselves. It recently won award for the Best Service Delivery Website at the 2012 Excellence in eGovernment Awards and in 2011 the MoneySmart website was named Best Government Website at the Australian Web Awards.

It is used by around 120,000 people a month and over 2 million people have used the website since its launch, which demonstrates the need for but also the desire of people to get this sort of information about their financial situations. The best part about this website is that it sells absolutely nothing. It is all about information. It is credible and it is very important. The most popular tool is the budget planner. It is used by more than 28,000 people per month. Another excellent tool is the retirement calculator. People to enter the income that they hope to have in retirement and, based on their current situation, it calculates the income that they are likely to have. This can put into stark clarity the discrepancy that exists for many people between their wishes and their likely income and gives them the opportunities to make changes today that can help them achieve their goals in the future.

Recently I conducted a forum in my electorate in Forest Lake for the Over 50s Club about financial literacy and also about avoiding scams. This was a great opportunity for me to speak to a group of Australians about financial literacy. They were a very interested group from a demographic that is often overlooked, as we sometimes assume that people who have attained 50 years or more of age have accumulated all the knowledge and all the skills to manage their finances. But it is often the case that they are the very group that we need to focus our attention on. In the era of financial literacy, learning never stops. In fact, when people reach middle age, it is often the ideal time to have a financial health check and stop and examine your financial health and make the necessary changes to help ensure that you do have long-term financial well being. I also want to congratulate the regulator—the Australian Securities and Investments Commission—for their very hard and good work in this area. It is a fantastic collaboration between this federal government and the regulator in delivering a tool and a resource for ordinary people that really does work.