Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion, I move:

That so much of standing order 142 be suspended as would prevent further consideration of the bills without limitation of time.

The reason I move this motion and strongly encourage the Australian Greens to give serious consideration to it is that the Senate has not had enough time to debate these Future of Financial Advice bills. The government is obviously desperate to avoid scrutiny by the Senate of this deeply flawed, deeply conflicted, job-destroying FoFA package. Some 63 amendments to the legislation have been circulated—18 amendments from the government itself. The government, with the arrogant process it is imposing—by the look of it with the complicit aiding and abetting of the Greens political party—wants to ram this bad, conflicted, job-destroying piece of legislation through the Senate without the Senate having any opportunity to debate the merits or otherwise of any of the amendments. That is not good enough. We certainly urge the Greens not to make themselves complicit yet again with this bad, dysfunctional and incompetent government as it tries to avoid the scrutiny of the parliament by ramming through bad legislation.

These bills impose significant additional red tape, significant additional complexity and significant additional costs on small business, financial advisers and consumers. These bills reduce choice, reduce competition and reduce the diversity in the financial services industry that consumers across Australia are looking for. The government took more than two years to put this legislation together. There was constant chopping and changing. Every time Minister Shorten tried to pursue the vested interests agenda of his friends in the financial services market, the rest of the industry and consumer groups and others were able to point out the deep flaws in his preferred policy approach. We had his foray into doing the bidding of his friends and then we had the backdown. We had the foray; we had the backdown—one after the other. There has been chopping and changing every step of the way for two years.

The legislation was introduced into the Senate only very recently and we only started debating it last night. There are 63 amendments listed for consideration—and these bills are supposed to come into effect on 1 July 2012, 10 days from now. These bills impose a significant additional burden on the financial services industry—a very important industry for Australia, a very important industry for our economy and a very important industry for those Australians who are working hard to achieve self-funded retirement. This is a set of bills which, according to the government's own explanatory memorandum, will cost 6,800 jobs in the financial services industry and which, according to industry estimates, will cost $700 million to implement and $350 million to $375 million to comply with per annum from there on in. It is a piece of legislation that did not even go through the government's own best practice regulation processes. By not conducting a proper and genuine regulatory impact assessment the government did not comply with its own most basic process requirements.

You would have thought that if any bill required a proper regulatory impact assessment it would be the sort of bill that would cause 6,800 jobs to be lost in the financial services industry; it would be the sort of bill that would impose an additional cost of $700 million to implement; it would be the sort of bill that would impose an additional $375 million worth of compliance costs per annum. But not with this government or this minister. Minister Shorten is pursuing the vested interests agenda of the super industry network. He is throwing process overboard. This arrogant, divided, dysfunctional, incompetent government cannot bear to have these bills properly aired, properly scrutinised, properly debated in the Senate, and the Senate should not stand for that. The Australian Greens should not be aiding and abetting a deeply divided, dysfunctional and incompetent government that is trying to push bad legislation through the parliament.

Even though this legislation is supposed to come into effect on 1 July 2012, the regulations are not finalised, the ASIC guidance on a big part of this legislation apparently will not be finalised until the end of the year and the code of conduct which is going to be important for the operation of this legislation will not be finalised until next year. There is an amendment on the books that says the government will make it a soft start. These are the sorts of things that the Senate should be able to debate, because a soft start will not work—we need to defer implementation until 1 July 2013. (Time expired)