Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the things we must be very careful about in this place is that when we introduce new legislation that has red tape in it we need to ensure that the unintended consequences do not outweigh any benefits that we are trying to impose. And I fear that we have done that with the creation of a new bureaucracy known as FASEA, the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority. Under the legislation a financial planner, someone in their sixties who may have worked all their life without a single complaint and has hundreds of satisfied clients, would be required to, firstly, pass an exam by 2022 and, secondly, go back to university to do six courses. So what we are seeing is that people are deciding that they will leave the industry because of the retrospective requirements that are being placed upon them. The end result of these extra burdens is that many Australians will be unable to afford financial advice. And they will instead go down to the pub and get their advice from Jim at the pub. It is the exact opposite of what we want to do.