Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

That is actually not true. That is actually not true! The Storm Financial collapse—and I know that Senator Macdonald took a very close interest in this—would not have been prevented by the imposition by Mr Shorten of a requirement to keep re-signing contracts. The clients of Storm Financial, for better or for worse, had signed all the paperwork you needed to sign. They kept re-signing paperwork all of the time. The fee arrangements were very transparent. That was not the problem. The problem was that they were being badly advised. They were not given advice that was appropriate to their circumstances. Of course, these are all things that have been addressed and will continue to be addressed as a result of the sensible recommendations that came out of the Ripoll inquiry.

The debate we are having here is really a debate at the margins, but it is a debate at the margins about something that is imposing significant additional costs on people across Australia saving for their retirements. I would say to the Senate that, if there is now a majority in the Senate that is inclined to revisit the previous two votes, there is a more sensible way to go about it than the way that is now being proposed today. It is not sensible to ram this through today without any proper notice to an important industry across Australia. This is not the sensible way to go. If the Labor Party were interested in doing things in a responsible way and in the public interest, rather than trying to ram something through while they think they might be able to hold a coalition of votes together, then they would allow this to be dealt with in a more orderly and methodical fashion between now and next Thursday.

I very strongly urge the Senate to very carefully consider what we are doing here. We are putting very important institutions, very important businesses, very important consumers—