Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Following on from Senator Whish-Wilson, I too have met with businesses to discuss this issue. Only a month ago, I was in Stanthorpe, which is south-west of Brisbane. I went to dinner there and I was expecting to talk about 457 visas for growers, wine equalisation tax issues and tourist issues, but there was a small business man there who has a financial advice business in Stanthorpe, with offices in Warwick. He thanked me, but he was really thanking Minister Cormann for the work he has done to take a huge regulatory burden off his business. It is a small business in a small town of only a few thousand people, and these changes that Labor introduced a few years ago had a massive impact on his business. Every two years, he has to ask his clients to sign back up with him. Imagine that if you were in any other business. Imagine if you were in any other business, you had an ongoing relationship with your clients and your customers, and you had to go back to them every two years and re-sign a contract. It is an unreasonable, unfair and unbalanced requirement on the small businesses of this nation that provide financial advice in our towns.

I heard Senator Whish-Wilson talk about how we want to encourage Australians to seek financial advice, and I agree completely, but people in regional areas who will rely on small businesses particularly to provide that advice will have more limited opportunities if we disallow these regulations today, because this regulatory burden will be put back on those businesses.

I took note of Senator Muir's contribution as well. I congratulate and commend him on the fine words in his first contribution—I think it was his first contribution—to this place. I particularly took note, Senator Muir, of your statement that we should make sure we have sufficient parliamentary scrutiny of measures that go before this place, and I absolutely agree, but why, then, are we rushing this debate today? Why are we putting this through today when we could have another week to look at it? What was the urgency of having to announce this overnight in a deal done between different parties behind the scenes and, as you admit, Senator Muir, to break a commitment you made with the government? Why can't we have sufficient parliamentary scrutiny to assess the implications of these changes? We all know the reason for that. As you said, Senator Muir, you were worried about other people talking to you about the other implications of what might happen. Why shouldn't we wait for that? Why shouldn't you make the time and have the respect for this place to wait for this to come before the parliament?

I want to say something that bears on the point that you made, Senator Muir, that we need scrutiny of regulatory and legislative changes. We absolutely do, but what you may not realise is that, when the former government put these reforms in place, they did not get the scrutiny they were meant to have. They got no scrutiny from the proper regulatory impact statement processes that both sides of politics have signed up to. Both sides of politics agree that major regulations have to go through a process before they go to cabinet and definitely before they come to this place. That is to make sure that, when we place these imposts on small businesses like those in Stanthorpe, there is not an undue regulatory burden placed on them. There is a good reason we have those processes. But, in this case, when there were major changes proposed to the financial advice regulatory landscape in this country, no regulatory impact statement was prepared. The regulatory cost of these changes was around $750 million up-front for the businesses all around the country. The ongoing cost is expected to be $350 million a year—not an insubstantial amount of money—but no regulatory impact statement was done by the former government.

The reason they did not do that was that they knew the answer they would get. In government, there is a solid rule: you do not ask a question if you do not know what the answer is going to be—but they knew what the answer was going to be. They knew that, if a regulatory impact statement was done on these changes, it would come back negative, for the reasons that Senator Back and Minister Cormann have outlined: this is an undue impost on small businesses. It is also unfair in that these two-yearly opt-in provisions that I discussed earlier are a requirement for private businesses or those providing individual advice but not a requirement for those who are involved in providing advice through an industry superannuation fund. Intrafund advice under the laws is exempt, and there is no good reason for that at all. On this side, we believe in fee disclosure. We believe that people providing advice should have to disclose their fees, but industry super funds are exempt under these laws from disclosing their fees to their clients. Why should they be exempt? Why shouldn't the clients of industry super funds have the same access to information as clients of a different type of financial advice? There is no good reason and there has not been one provided in this debate. The issue has been ignored—and ignored for good reason by those on the other side.

I also say to Senator Muir: there has been parliamentary scrutiny of these changes that the government has put forward. There have been two Senate economics committee reports on these changes, both of which have recommended that they be enacted. There have been submissions taken by those inquiries and hearings conducted. There has been lots of scrutiny.

The other thing is that the people have been able to scrutinise these changes, too, because the policy of the coalition has remained consistent for years now—right from the start when Labor introduced these reforms and we knew they had not done a regulatory impact statement. I saw Senator Cormann develop the government's position in opposition when it was his portfolio responsibility and I have seen Senator Sinodinos, when it was his responsibility, and, of course, now we have Minister Cormann conducting this—and it has been consistent the whole way through. The people voted on this last year. It was put to a vote and the government received a mandate on these changes. It was assessed by the people. So we have now had parliamentary scrutiny and we have had the democratic scrutiny we have through elections, but apparently that is still not enough. Why is it not enough?

I believe what has happened in this chamber today is extremely regrettable. We have decided to make a change overnight to what the landscape was and to what the regulations in our country were. And we all know why we are doing this. I believe we are going to do this because individual members of the Palmer United Party want to split with their party and cause division. That is going to have a multimillion dollar impact on small business—all for the interests of a minor party in this chamber.