Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are parts of the legislation that people here are prepared to support—and you touched on them earlier—and there are parts that we are not. But that is how this place should be run. These are bad regulations. These are bad laws. They exceed their power. They go too far. They fundamentally change the nature of financial advice laws in this country, and they need to be rejected.

I reject the notion from the minister that this is somehow about industry super and that that is the only thing that this is about. It is not about that at all. There are thousands of victims of financial crime out there. We are going through a Senate process at the moment, and I want to put on the record that, while there will be disagreement—and there is a disagreement in this place at this point in time—as to the nature of dealing with the issue, there has been an incredible amount of cross-party support in trying to get to the bottom of a lot of these matters. I acknowledge that the former chair of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee and the deputy chair of the references committee are here with us. Senator Heffernan, Senator Williams and others have all agreed about how horrible some of these crimes have been, though there is a difference of opinion as to what is the best way of dealing with that. So I want to get on the record—

Senator Bushby interjecting—

There is a legitimate policy disagreement about the best way of tackling and approaching this. I know there were a few comments earlier from Senator Back—though I do not think he meant them as seriously as he said them—but no-one here is trying to claim that they are the only ones who care about this issue. There is a legitimate disagreement, and we are entitled in this place to have legitimate disagreements on what the best policy response is. My belief, and the belief of many other senators, is that the best policy response is to make sure we have a very, very high standard. Unfortunately, there are elements of these regulations that I and others believe water down these regulations—that weaken them—and allow a handful of crooks, criminals and con men to take us back to the bad old days of financial planning where a handful of financial planners were able to give the entire industry a bad name.

This is bad law. There has been a bad process and it is bad policy. Frankly, the government should be forced to go back to the drawing board, bring their legislation before the chamber and allow a debate where the many different views of different senators in this place can be put forward—and I know there is a series of different amendments that senators will be moving as part of that legislative process. Allow us to have this debate properly. Bringing in in the dead of the night these regulations that have fundamentally changed how financial advice laws in this country operate was not the right the thing to do. It was not the right process, Minister. I think it is important that we use the opportunity that we have now, if these are disallowed, to go back to the drawing board and bring forward legislation and allow an open, honest and serious debate.

Yes, Minister, people like myself and others on this side of the chamber very reasonably respect the fact that there will have to be a facilitative approach to allow for the implementation of the law that we will be returning to. I think that is a reasonable and sensible thing to do, and it is how things have operated in the past. If the minister and ASIC were prepared to bring forward a reasonable facilitative approach and process, I think you would find that there would be a lot of support—though I do not want to speak on behalf of other senators—for that form of implementation process. These are bad laws. This has been a bad process. I urge the Senate and all senators to support this disallowance motion.