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

Thank you, Senator Whish-Wilson. As you would be well aware, we have had hours of debate about all the ins and outs of the future of financial advice changes, which had their iteration right from the outset—from the previous government's efforts to implement recommendations from a bipartisan inquiry, locally referred to as the Ripoll inquiry, through the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services.

With reforms of this size and complexity, there are always unintended consequences. Various parliamentary committees have scrutinised this in some great detail. The amendments here in front of us are amendments that have broad consensus across, at least, the two major parties as being sensible technical improvements to the framework that is currently in place and will continue to be in place. As such, unless Senator Whish-Wilson has a specific question he wants me to address, I do not propose to go back through the whole comprehensive debate that we have been having for a number of years on these matters. In fact, that debate started all the way back in 2009. I am always happy to answer specific questions but that is really a question that invites me to go through the whole history, again.