Senate debates

Wednesday, 6 September 2023

Bills

Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023; Second Reading

10:57 am

Photo of Andrew BraggAndrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No problem. Thank you very much. It was a real pleasure to be able to have that engagement with Senator O'Neill. We will be supporting this bill, but I will take the opportunity to make some remarks about the various schedules.

Financial advice is a service which should be widely available to Australians. I don't believe that it is in the best interest of Australians to receive financial advice only from superannuation funds. I believe that people should be able to access advice about their financial affairs from an unconflicted source. There have been major issues in this sector for many years which have been cleaned by both sides of government. We are now in a position where we have gone from 29,000 advisers just four years ago to 15,000 today, which has driven up the cost and reduced the accessibility of good, unconflicted financial advice.

To remedy this situation, the former government commissioned the Levy review, which is gathering dust over at the ministerial wing where Minister Jones—this is the second time this morning that I've had an opportunity to remind the Senate of the failure of Minister Jones to move on important financial sector issues—principally because this is not the agenda of the big unions or the big super funds, and these are the only stakeholder groups that the government seems to want to do any work for.

The problem with the government's economic policy is that all of its effort goes into feathering the nests of its favourite fellow travellers, and therefore the government has no time to develop policy for the rest of us. This is another example. The issue here is that the Levy review has given the country a pathway to get more accessibility to financial advice. That was commissioned by the very fine senator for Victoria Senator Hume. Of course, its recommendations to improve accessibility are based on stripping away deadweight costs. That is sitting on the minister's desk. We have seen no legislation to improve accessibility.

The problem here is that the government has allowed the securities regulator, ASIC, to triple the fees that individual financial advisers must pay ASIC as part of the supervisory levy. That has gone from $1,200 up to almost $3,500 per advisor. So at a time when you have got locked in regulatory costs, which the Levy review said should be swept away, you have a government allowing the regulator to triple the supervisory cost on individual financial planners.

Every day we see here in this chamber the executive government running cover for the hapless securities regulator, ASIC. Yesterday the Senate passed a motion to require transparency around the conduct of the chair Joe Longo. There are major governance issues inside the commission and there is a significant problem with the agency enforcing the laws. So ASIC fails to enforce the law and the Labor government allows the regulator to smash financial advisors with a $3,500 levy, which is only going to make it much harder for there to be affordable accessible financial advice.

Going back to my main thesis here about the government, which is that this is a government of vested interests, one of the things Mr Jones talked about when he belatedly released the government's response to the Levy review was that super funds will be able to give a certain form of advice before anyone else will be able to. This of course is further evidence that regulatory arbitrage is in the DNA of the Labor Party. They are always trying to find a leg-up for their fellow travellers.

This bill in particular though—and I welcome this element—introduces the concept that, if you are a financial advisor who has been giving advice for more than 10 years and has a clean record, you do not have to go back to university. This is for an advisor with a clean record and with 10 years of experience. The advisor still needs to pass the exam. I think that's a very sensible approach, because we don't want to see the supply of advisers reduce even more. So we welcome the government's movement on that front.

The bill also deals with competition in clearing. This has been a vexed issue for many a day. I have always thought it rather curious that there is a view that we should prop up a monopoly provider of clearing and settlement services. I think it's good that there will be better governance standards applied through these new proposed powers to clearing and settlement in Australia.

Everyone knows that the ASX had a major governance fail when it came to delivering the new CHESS. I don't believe that that's a vote of no confidence in the technology of cryptography or blockchain. I think it is a governance failure. Perhaps the regulators could have been watching more closely, but nevertheless this new proposed power does ensure that there are more safeguards for competition in clearing and settlement, which has happened in other jurisdictions. I think it's unreasonable for the ASX to expect that it will be shielded from competition for ever and ever, so I think that's a reasonable proposition.

Finally, this bill also makes some minor changes to the First Home Buyer Super Saver Scheme. This really goes to one of the big differences between Labor and the coalition parties. We believe that people should be able to prioritise home ownership. Home ownership should be a priority because if you're a retired renter, you're going to have a much harder retirement than you otherwise would. Access to a first home should be a priority for all of us. I agree with Senator McKim's statements before; I think it was Darryl Kerrigan who made the comment that the value of a house goes beyond any economic concept, and that is true. The fact that the Labor Party want to hermetically seal all superannuation money away from people who want to get access to a first home really shows that they always want to put their political allies above the interests of the community. There's a very good case for people to be able to use their own money to access a first home, particularly for millennials and generation Zs who are struggling to get access to a first home.

No-one is saying that this is a silver bullet. Supply issues are of course essential here and need to be addressed by the Commonwealth government. The HAFF won't do anything to assist that. I think this is a great failure of the Labor government on housing. The fact that they won't entertain the superannuation angle and that the HAFF has been such a disaster is one of the biggest problems this government has created for itself. But, obviously, we welcome the fact that they're trying to make these schemes a bit easier for people. For the record, the Labor Party has always opposed our efforts to try to relax some of the very rigid rules that exist around superannuation. It's very clear to me why: it comes back to this point about wanting to support the people who have put them into parliament, who have been on their preselections and who make donations to their campaigns. It's very clear—you can see it for what it is: they will always put the interests of the super funds above the interests of people. They of course dress it up in other rhetoric, but that's the reality of the situation.

I think that over the next 10 years the Australian people will see super for what it is, and I think they'll be open to much more flexibility—particularly around opening it up for first home ownership. I also think that people will look very closely at whether it's a good idea to pay an enormous amount of interest to a bank and then pull their super out when they get to 60 to pay off their mortgage. I think that's going to be a new fault line in Australian politics: we will always try to put people before institutions. Therefore, naturally, we'll look for opportunities to ensure that people's own money can be used to support their objectives to get access to a first home, and also to suit their general financial objectives—which may be to have a lower mortgage. If we're going to have persistently high interest rates because of the Labor Party's inability to get a handle on inflation, then these are going to be some of the most important policy debates we will have in the next little while.

I don't wish to detain the Senate any longer, or waste any more time. We will support this bill, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to make some comments about it today.

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