Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to make a very short contribution on the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020. I won't go into the detail of the bill; Senator Bragg has done that very well. I acknowledge the presence of Minister Hume, the Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy, in the chamber. I know that Minister Hume, with the other portfolio ministers in this space, has consulted extensively on the bill.

I do have a few philosophical reflections on the way this parliament and the executive need to deal with royal commissions. I think we have to be very careful—and I'll use a phrase that's been used in other contexts here—to recognise that a royal commission report is a report to the government, not of the government. Royal commissioners and royal commissions do not have a font of pure wisdom. They do not necessarily provide recommendations that always reflect the full breadth of knowledge and information that governments need to take into account. I say that as a word of caution to those opposite and those on the crossbench. People start thinking that what a royal commissioner recommends has to be implemented 100 per cent and that that is what this parliament's job is to do. I disagree with that. I think we need to look very carefully at royal commissioners' recommendations, but then we have to do what is in the best interests of Australia. I say that in the context of an environment where I want as many Australians as possible to be able to access high-quality financial advice. I fear that the suite of changes that has been made over the past decade has created an environment where the cost of advice will increase and some Australians will not be able to afford high-quality financial advice and so will be forced into more set-and-forget products, like superannuation. I think that is a concern moving forward. As these measures are implemented, I think we do need to send a very strong message to the regulators particularly that we need to always remember that the goal here is to ensure that the financial advice that is out there in the marketplace is of the highest quality but is also affordable and can be delivered in an affordable way so that as many Australians as possible can access that advice.

In an environment where you have best-interest obligations and where you have an end to trailing commissions, perhaps something we could look at in future is whether the yearly opt-in is the right time frame. To me, one year is not a magical number. Perhaps two years is a more regulatory-friendly period to look at in the future. As a chamber, as a parliament, I would like us to keep thinking about these things. We need to create an environment where we allow Australians—Australian families, Australian businesses—to access high-quality and affordable financial advice.