Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition will be supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023. This is a four-schedule Treasury omnibus bill, and many of the changes in this bill continue the work of the former coalition government. However, support for the passage of this bill is by no means an endorsement of this government's economic plan, a plan that is clearly failing Australians. It is by no means an endorsement of a government that is refusing to take responsibility for high inflation, rising mortgage payments, rising prices at the check-out and rising energy bills, just to name a few. The challenges faced by Australians are not addressed in this bill.

The bill makes changes that are largely technical in their nature to credit facilities, financial advice regulation, clearing and settlement services and the First Home Super Saver Scheme. Schedule 1 introduces new rules that prohibit schemes designed to avoid the application of product intervention orders made under part 7.9A of the Corporations Act 2001 in relation to credit facilities. Schedule 2 changes limitations in the education requirements for new entrants into the financial advice profession and financial advisers who are registered tax agents, and it removes the education requirements for experienced financial advisers with 10 years experience and a clean record who have passed the financial advisers exam. Schedule 3 amends the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001, the Corporations Act 2001 and the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to facilitate competition in the provision of clearing and settlement services for cash equities traded in Australia. Schedule 4 makes a number of technical changes to the Taxation Administration Act 1953 and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to support the operations of the First Home Super Saver Scheme so that it works better for first home buyers. On schedules 2 and 4, I'll make a few more detailed comments.

Australia has a strong financial services sector. It's one of the bedrocks of our economy, and we want it to remain that way. It's been remarkably strong over the past decade. In fact, it served us extremely well through the financial crisis. The coalition remains committed to ensuring that Australians have access to high-quality, affordable financial advice. It's why we welcome the changes made in schedule 2 of this bill. In government, we implemented a series of measures to improve consumer protections and to streamline and strengthen oversight of the financial advice sector, and we support a continuation of that approach. This part of the bill will help to make it easier for financial advisers with good records to remain eligible to provide personal advice. The expansion of personal advice was one of the key recommendations of Michelle Levy's Quality of Financial Advice Review, which the coalition supported in principle, and which has the wide support of the financial advice and financial services sectors.

Unfortunately, the government's response to the Levy review is a half-baked attempt at a solution which fails to address the major challenges to improve access to financial advice for Australians. While overdue, the government's stream 1 reforms are welcome—but the narrow acceptance of the medium-term agenda will leave Australians with less access to financial advice, and advisers working outside the superannuation system were left out in the cold. The response to the Levy review was a key opportunity to drive better retirement outcomes and productivity in the economy, but the government has shied away from making any genuine improvements. Narrowly implementing the Levy review risks undermining innovative investment and product design in the financial advice sector, and creates an unequal playing field between superannuation funds and the remainder of the financial services sector. The coalition is calling on the Albanese government to adopt all the recommendations of the Levy review and to work constructively with the coalition on its implementation. This is a vital deregulation measure that will deliver wins for consumers, as well as supporting innovation and investment in the financial services sector.

Schedule 4 of the bill also makes technical changes to the First Home Buyers Super Saver Scheme. This scheme was an initiative of the former coalition government and is helping Australians to boost their savings to buy their first home by allowing them to build a deposit inside their superannuation. For most people, the scheme could boost the savings of a first homebuyer by almost 30 per cent compared with savings through a standard savings account. This was just one measure of the former coalition government that was aimed at helping Australians to get into their first home. The coalition is absolutely committed to helping more Australians achieve the dream of owning their own home.

But, despite containing some positive measures, this bill does not address the No. 1 issue facing Australians, and that is the cost of living. The impact of inflation and rising interest rates is being felt by businesses and families across the community. Rising mortgages, rising prices at the check-out and rising energy bills are all eating away at already-tight household budgets. Australians are having to work more hours to make ends meet, they're having to dig into their savings to make ends meet and our core inflation is higher than for any G7 nation except the United Kingdom. Core inflation is still almost double the higher threshold of where inflation should be, at 5.8 per cent. Tomorrow we will see in the nation's account how poorly the economy is performing under this government. Economists are not ruling out a per capita recession and many economists are predicting that there will be further interest rate rises to come this year.

This is a tough time for Australians and this bill does nothing to address those problems. Despite this, the coalition will support the passage of this bill.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to offer a few comments on schedule 4 of the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023, which makes administrative changes that enhance the ATO's powers to deal with applications for the first home savers scheme.

I'll start by stating very clearly that the changes proposed in this bill are sensible enough and that we certainly won't oppose those changes. But I do want to offer a few comments on the First Home Buyers Saver Scheme, to place on the record that this policy is just another demand-side measure that will actually push property prices up at the very same time that home ownership is decreasing in Australia. To quote Saul Eslake, 'Anything that allows people to spend more on housing than they otherwise would has one effect, and one effect only: people spend more money on housing than they otherwise would.' Mr Eslake is very right about that. Ultimately, this scheme ends up pushing house prices up and locking even more Australians out of the great Australian dream of owning their own home.

Of course, demographically speaking, the largest cohort of Australians who are being locked out of that great dream of owning their own home are young Australians. These are the very people who are facing extreme and growing rental stress, because rents are out of control in this country and are skyrocketing. That is why Labor should actually be stepping in and doing something about rents and enacting rent control so that unlimited rent rises can no longer occur. But, of course, Labor won't do that, because ultimately Labor is a party that backs in property speculators over and above people who are looking for a home for themselves and their families.

Ms Collins, Labor's housing minister, said the quiet thing out loud a few months ago in an interview on the 7.30 program when she said that Labor wants housing to be an asset and investment class in Australia. Talk about belling the cat! Housing being an asset and investment class is one of the major reasons we are in the mess we are right now with housing. Property prices are going through the roof, rents are going through the roof, and more and more Australians are in either a housing or rental crisis where they can't afford to pay their mortgages or they can't afford to pay skyrocketing rents. Of course, it's the property speculators who are winning here, because the Labor party is overseeing a system where you pay more tax on income that you earn by going to work than you do if you're already wealthy enough to speculate on property. That's the problem we've got. With negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, there are massive tax breaks for people who speculate on property, and the people who pay for that are the ordinary taxpayers, many of whom are being priced out of the rental market.

Labor needs to get serious about addressing the housing crisis. They need to significantly increase the supply of public and social and affordable housing, and they need to do that to a greater degree than what they are proposing to do in their Housing Australia Future Fund, which is about taking money, investing it into the stock market through the future fund and hoping it makes enough of a profit to maybe build a few houses over the next few years. The first thing Labor needs to do is increase its ambition and actually do more to increase the supply of affordable housing in Australia.

Secondly and critically, Labor needs to do something for renters. One-third of Australians rent their homes, and Labor is abandoning these people to the whims of the market, and the market is putting up rents at record rates. That's what's going on here. More and more people are being priced out of their homes because landlords are taking the opportunity to continue to put up rents. Through the inquiry into the rental situation that this Senate established we heard story after story of double-digit rent increases—repeated double-digit rent increases. It's extremely difficult to be a renter in this country at the moment. It is clear that the Australian Labor Party have no capacity to understand how hard renters are doing it in this country at the moment, because if they did understand it they would be taking action. They would be bringing in rent controls so that repeated and unlimited rent increases are illegal. Renters need protection here, and the Labor party is not delivering it.

The only party arguing for renters is the Australian Greens, and we've been very clear what Labor's solutions should be—significantly increase your ambition on supply, build significantly more public and affordable housing in this country and enact rent controls so that unlimited rent rises are unlawful. Do those two things, and do them well and in a meaningful way, and that would be a significant government response to the massive social crisis that exists in this country at the moment. But that's not what we're getting from the Labor Party. Instead, we're getting a tax system that massively favours property speculators. We are getting a slash in funding for the NRAS program, which means that somewhere in the region of 24,000 families will lose their affordable rental homes over the next three years. Of course, when that happens they'll face eviction into the private rental market and potentially homelessness over the next three years.

We hear a lot about Mr Albanese's log cabin story. My advice to the Prime Minister is: stop it. Stop trying to con people into believing that you actually understand the challenges that they are facing in the housing and rental markets at the moment. If the Prime Minister genuinely understood the stress that people are under, particularly renters, he would be doing something about it, but he's not doing anything about it. His log cabin story is just another bit of spin, and it is not driving the government's response to the housing and rental crisis in any significant way. While Labor is still abjectly failing to respond to the housing and rental crisis, my suggestion to the Prime Minister is: put the log cabin story away because it just makes you look like a hypocrite. It just makes you look like you don't get it. It just makes you look like you're all spin and no substance.

Labor has got to get real here. If they want to get real, they need to understand the stresses that people are under, particularly renters. They need to walk a mile in some other people's shoes for once. One of the ways that they could do that is to actually have a read of the many thousands of submissions to the rental inquiry that this Senate established following a Greens motion and have a look at some of the heart-rending stories that we are hearing from renters—absolutely heart-rending.

The rental market is out of control in this country, and it's out of control in this country because Labor believes that housing is an asset and investment class. Do you know what housing actually is? It's a place for people to make a home, and having a home is a fundamental human right. Every Australian should have a home. We're a wealthy country, and our homelessness rates are a national disgrace. We can do much, much better than we currently do. The fact that we're not is a political choice, and it's a political choice of the Australian Labor Party. They need to increase their ambition on housing supply significantly from where they are at the moment. They need to step up and do something meaningful for renters and enact some rent controls so that unlimited rent rises become unlawful in Australia. That's what we need to see.

As I said, housing is a human right. Housing should never be seen as an asset and investment class. For the Minister for Housing to say that that's the way Labor views housing in Australia—that Labor wants housing to be an asset and investment class—is an admission that Labor doesn't understand that what housing is about is providing a place for people to make a home. People deserve a place to call home. Every Australian deserves a place to call home, and they deserve to have a place that they can call home without having to pay so much money in rents or mortgages that it places them into financial stress.

I also want to quickly touch on the actions of the Reserve Bank over the last few years, because they have contributed significantly to the housing crisis, which is one of the things that the first home savers scheme seeks to address. During the pandemic the RBA printed hundreds of billions of dollars of money; they gave that money to the banks at extremely favourable rates. The banks turned around and lent it out to their highest-margin products—which, of course, are mortgages—and, inevitably, house prices went through the roof during the pandemic. Then, having induced people to take out mortgages by saying that interest rates wouldn't rise until 2024, the RBA embarked on a series of rent rises—a record series of consecutive rent rises. What that means is that people are now under mortgage stress, particularly if they bought at the top of the market, having believed Dr Lowe's promise that interest rates wouldn't go up until 2024. We have people under mortgage stress, we have people under rental stress, and what is Labor's response to these things? A pathetically small commitment to increasing supply and effectively nothing for renters.

This is the last thing I'll say on this today: Labor does have a chance to step up and do the right thing, and the Greens stand ready to work with Labor to put in place a comprehensive response to increase supply and take the pressure off renters. I genuinely hope Labor party will accept that offer.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023. The purpose of this bill is to improve the integrity of consumer markets for credit products. It is also to remove barriers for financial advisers and, further, to support competition in the provision of clearing and settlement services for cash equities. I recall the time before I was in the parliament, when I would be listening to the radio as I drove from place to place, hearing debates on all sorts of issues, and I realised how educative it is sometimes to hear debates about matters that you think would have no impact on your life, and then suddenly you realise that what is going on in the parliament does impact your life. That is why today I want to frame my contribution in the context of everything that happens at the Australian Stock Exchange is not something that is a long distance away from Australians' financial reality. The exchange provides for the functioning of the economy and the functioning of the markets in a way that allows profits for companies that are carrying the investment of Australians' superannuation. I begin my contribution on what might be described as a rather dry bill by framing it in that context: this, potentially, has real, material impact on the lives of Australians if we do our work carefully and well here in the parliament.

What is proposed in schedule 3 of the bill is an amendment to the Corporations Act, the Competition and Consumer Act and the ASIC act to facilitate competitive outcomes in the provision of clearing and settlement services for the Australian financial markets. In the course of hearings of both the Economics Legislation Committee and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, of which I'm chair, we took considerable evidence about the impact of a lack of competition in this space and the importance of bringing forward the opportunity for the embedding of better processes to allow for the clearing and settlement of transactions in the Australian financial market. There are a number of amendments in this bill that will provide ASIC with powers to implement and enforce requirements for a monopoly provider of a clearing and settlement service to operate in a way that does achieve a competitive outcome, and also to ensure safe and effective competition in clearing and/or settlement should a competitor emerge.

As I said, the importance of superannuation financial markets to all Australians is something that we should never, ever lose sight of. The financial engagement that every Australian has through their superannuation and the superannuation companies that invest on their behalf is truly remarkable. The fiscal sustainability of our nation is actually built on the ability of workers to save parts of their income and grow that nest egg to support them well in their retirement. Against a demographic crunch taking place across the Western world, when we've seen a much higher taxation burden falling on an ever-shrinking working-age population, superannuation is going to be even more important in the coming years. I'll add that it's an incredible Labor legacy that would not otherwise exist. It was decried absolutely by representatives on the other side of this chamber, who saw no point in superannuation—

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll take the interjection from Senator Bragg, who has spent so much of his political life here trying to break down the superannuation sector and take away the security that Australians get not only from having dignity in retirement but in having a say in investments in our own country through the markets and in having access to insurance at a much-reduced rate. Despite all of those things and millions of Australians benefiting, Senator Bragg continues the Liberal-National coalition legacy of smashing the concept of superannuation. That's why it's really important that it's Labor that's leading this reform, and I look to colleagues in this chamber for support in what this bill seeks to achieve.

If we're going to get the best value for the investment of Australians' transactions through the stock exchange, that benefit is going to hinge on the efficiency and viability of the financial system. The Australian stock exchange plays an incredibly important, indeed a crucial, role for both business and the everyday investors across this country. According to a recent AFR article, $874 billion in super fund holdings are invested in the Australian stock exchange, with a projected 41 per cent share of ASX super fund ownership by 2030. Let's be clear: the ASX is truly the lifeblood of the Australian superannuation industry and intimately connected with the financial future of every Australian who is working in this country, has a superannuation balance and is relying on the proper working of the market in the most efficient way.

The fact we face, though, is that the system that was the envy of the world when it was introduced by the Australian stock exchange, which is known as the CHESS system, has been subject to a lot of work in terms of update, replacement and improvement. It's fair to say that there have been incredible failures in the process towards that end. The CHESS replacement program and a lack of success there, aligned with an exposure to the innovative powers of competition, means that the incentive structure of the current monopoly is just not working for Australians. We know that there have been considerable concerns expressed and that in recent times, under the leadership of Mr Joe Longo from ASIC, there has been some change implemented to reshape a committee to observe and understand what's going on with the CHESS replacement system. But the problems are multiple and they are manifesting themselves in ways that are of great concern to those Australians who do intimately engage with the exchange. People who are watching, including the Treasury, know that the CHESS replacement program is overbudget, overtime and underdelivered. This program to replace what was cutting-edge technology has been so mismanaged from the start, and by repeated attempts to improve governance, that it simply has not yet produced adequate results.

We are offering our exchange in competition with other exchanges around the world, and what we're seeing is that other nations around the world are seeing clearing and settlement times reduced to T+1 time frames, and they're doing that with cutting-edge technology. Australia, however, is still reliant on an expensive and antiquated system that just doesn't adequately reflect the sophistication of our economy and our workforce. Australia's ranking on the Global Financial Centres Index has fallen, with Sydney and Melbourne, previously ranked seventh and 18th respectively, now down to 13th and 31st. This is not something we should be proud of, in any shape or form, and it's not something we can allow to continue. It's fair to say that if Australia's financial system is not continuously striving for better services then the superannuation system can't adequately perform, and there is a material impact on the retirement outcomes of everyday Australians for every sticky bit of the system that is not working as efficiently and as productively as it could be.

Schedule 3 of this bill seeks to implement recommendations made by the Council of Financial Regulators to strengthen regulatory powers and facilitate competitive outcomes in the market for clearing and settlement of cash equities traded in Australia. To be clear, the Australian stock exchange is an entity that's unknown to many Australians, and perhaps people in this chamber and people who are listening to this debate today think of it as a piece of public infrastructure. The ASX is not a public infrastructure site. It's privately owned. It seeks to make a profit and it has a monopoly over the services of clearing and settlement.

The reforms that have been proposed in this bill will have significant benefits for businesses that compete with the ASX in other parts of the cash equities market, such as the financial market operators, or rely on the ASX's monopoly clearing and settlement services, such as clearing and settlement participants and share registries. For them, the practical reality is that a delay in being able to access these systems and a lack of transparency around fair prices for these services can increase their costs, and the lack of competition, which is something that was put to us in evidence over the course of our inquiry, is a factor in the stalling of innovation. The argument that's been put is that the monopoly is happy with the profit that it's making and is obfuscating the advance of innovation because it might not see it as being in its interests. That's been disputed, of course, by various leaders of the ASX over time, but nonetheless it is a conversation that is well and truly alive in the sector.

The reforms that are proposed in this piece of legislation will enable ASIC to write rules relating to the governance of clearing and settlement facilities, including rules related to board composition and user input to governance. This will have the additional benefit of allowing ASIC to make rules which apply to the governance of the ASX CHESS replacement project—the delay of which, I might add, has resulted in significant costs to the wider industry. If a competitor does emerge in the provision of cash equities clearing and settlement, ASIC will be able to ensure that that competitor and the competition it provides are safe and effective for the benefit of Australians and those who trade in the Australian stock exchange. For example, this piece of legislation would enable us to make rules with respect to the interoperability between competing clearing and settlement facilities. If a competitor does not emerge, rules will ensure competitive outcomes can still be achieved by allowing ASIC to make rules regarding the activities, conduct and governance of clearing and settlement facility licensees. This is intended to ensure that these services are provided on fair, reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory terms.

Where clearing and settlement services are provided by an entity which enjoys a monopoly or a significant market power, this piece of legislation will, critically, create the opportunity for arbitration, which will be available to industry participants that rely on access to clearing and settlement services to resolve any disputes about those terms and conditions of access, including the issue of price. This is intended to be a final but efficient backstop when good-faith commercial negotiations break down. It has largely been modelled on national access regime part IIIA of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, with a few changes embedded in this legislation to improve the efficiency of the arbitration process and to provide timely outcomes for parties.

What we're proposing in this legislation is just a part of the Albanese government's multifaceted approach to securing the financial system as a critical component of the Australian economy. I am absolutely certain that Australians were horrified by the PricewaterhouseCoopers con of the Australian taxation system, which still makes my blood boil and sharpens my mind to uncover every facet of that fraud. The truth is that PwC and its peers in the big four audit industry are crucial firms to establishing the credibility of a set of financial statements, to give confidence that the accounts are true and fair. Further, they provide an important role in alerting firms on their liquidity and solvency from the short to the long term. One needs only to look at the oligopolistic audit market that concentrates as the ASX 300 moves to the top 100 firms. Therefore, it is paramount that they perform this function appropriately and with integrity, but that is not what is occurring.

What is happening instead is instances of light-touch approaches; unproductive cosy relationships; rushed jobs; and firms that have a pyramid-scheme approach to their workforce, forcing their graduates to work long hours for low pay, luring them in with a distant shot at potentially one day making partner level. These things also impact on a market. It needs to be properly functioning, and I commend TLAB3 to this chamber. It deserves support.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise for not calling you earlier, Senator Bragg. I was getting confused between my speakers list for this TLA bill and the next TLA bill. I will give you the call now.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to rise and speak today on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023. I specifically want to speak about schedule 4, which is to do with the intersection of tax policy and housing. That's because we're in a housing crisis.

We are in a housing crisis and a rental crisis here in Australia, so we would hope that if there were changes to legislation being made that these measures would be carefully targeted to address the housing crisis. Fundamentally, the core of our housing crisis is for people who want to buy a home to live in or for people who want to rent a home. Houses cost too much—they're too expensive. What we need to do is to reduce the cost of housing for those people.

The people who are celebrating the increase in the cost of housing and the increase in the cost of rents are property investors who are making a motsa out of housing at the moment, yet we have increasing inequality. While property investors are saying, 'Hurray' because they can see their profits going up, because they can see they are making more money out the housing they have invested in, we have people who have can't afford to buy a house, who can't afford to rent a house, who are spending a massive amount of their income on rental. These are the key problems we need to be addressing.

Schedule 4 makes administrative changes to enhance the ATO's powers to deal with applications for the first home saver scheme. They are sensible enough changes and the Greens aren't going to be opposing them. But the critical issue is they are not going to make life easier for people who are trying to buy their first home. Saul Eslake captured the problem with schemes like the first home saver scheme. He said anything that allows people to spend more on housing than they otherwise would as one effect and one effect only—people spend more money on housing than they otherwise would. Essentially, measures like this, which put more money in the hands of first homebuyers, mean that the price of those first homes goes up. It is what the market will bear.

I've just been chairing our inquiry into the worsening rental crisis. It was very illuminating to hear from the Real Estate Institute as to why they are encouraging landlords to put up the price of rent. They said, 'It is our duty to recommend to our landlords that the price of rents go up. We want our landlords to maximise the amount of money they can make out of their investment.' And that is exactly the same when you're talking about buying houses. Of course the people who are selling want to maximise the amount of money that they can get out of selling that property. If there is more money in the hands of people who are buying those houses, particularly if they are competing against investors who are cashed up, who have tax incentives to support them, it means that the price of that house is going to go up, so nobody wins. The first homebuyers, all they end up with is a much bigger mortgage and that can be a real burden. They can find great difficulties in actually meeting the costs of that mortgage. They are competing with investors who are happy to spend that money because they know that they can rent it out and can, in this current environment of very short supply, completely rack up the rents, send the rents skyrocketing stratospherically and people are going to have to pay.

I mean, it is very clear that, if we're going to be amending our tax laws, there are things that we should be doing if we're serious about actually trying to reduce the cost of housing, whether it is buying a house or whether it is renting a house. The first thing we need to do is increase the supply of social, public and affordable housing. We then need rent controls and we need to actually reduce the tax incentives for investors that just encourage them to treat housing as a commodity rather than as a human right. The fundamental difference between the Greens and the other parties who are in here is that we recognise that housing is a human right; it cannot be just treated as a commodity. We cannot have a situation where you just have rents going up, where you have the cost of housing going up and people are left homeless. It is having a massive impact on our society today.

Let me go through in some detail about what needs to happen. I mean, it is very clear the measures that could happen, that this government could introduce, that the previous government could have introduced but are not because of pressure from those property investors, the property developers. That is who is dictating our housing policy here in Australia. But if you're actually planning housing to serve the interests of ordinary Australians, to make sure that housing is affordable and remains affordable, there are those three things we need to be doing. Let me go through them in order.

Firstly, increase supply of public, social and affordable housing. When we hear about the need to increase supply, this government and the previous government just talk generally about 'Let's just build. Let's increase supply. Let's set the private property developers to build more houses. The government's getting a million houses built and now there are incentives to get 1.2 million houses built.' They don't talk about those houses needing to be affordable. It's just whatever the property developers want to build. So you then have a lot of money being put into building really high-end apartments and, if they don't get filled for a while, that doesn't matter, because you've got tax concessions so that you can write off any losses that you make. Essentially, it's a really inefficient way of building supply.

What we need to do, and where we have failed over the last two decades, is to invest in and build supply of public, social and affordable housing that is going to provide housing for people who just cannot compete in that highly overheated, overblown property market—the people who at the moment are spending 70 or even 80 per cent of their income on rent. Here in my office this week, I met with a woman who is spending 83 per cent of her disability support pension on housing, on her rent—83 per cent. Yes, that means that she hasn't got money left over for food. Food has become a discretionary item. She hasn't got money for her medical appointments or for medication.

So we need to have that investment in supply so that there is housing for people on low incomes that doesn't just rely upon the whim of the market to provide something that they can afford. We used to have that in Australia. We used to have an adequate supply of public and social housing, and we don't anymore. That's a fundamental reason why we are in a crisis at the moment: because governments of both persuasions, both state and federal, have not invested in public, social and affordable housing over the last two decades.

So we need to actually tackle the scale of the problem when it comes to that investment in public, social and affordable housing, and the half a billion dollars from the Housing Affordability Future Fund just doesn't cut the mustard. It does not go to the scale of the problem. The government's own advice is that in order to get rid of the waiting lists for public and social housing, which currently sit at 650,000 people, we should be investing $15 billion a year in public and social housing. So half a billion is just not going to touch the sides. That's the sort of scale of investment that we should be making, and we can afford to do it. At the same time that we're spending $368 billion on AUKUS nuclear powered submarines and proposing over $30 billion a year in tax cuts to the wealthiest in our society, the government is saying: 'Oh, no, no, no. We can only afford to spend half a billion dollars on public and social housing.'

So we need to get serious about investing in public and affordable housing and increasing that supply. Then you would have people who would actually have somewhere to live. That in itself would bring down rents. That in itself would mean that people who are renting would be able to save money and afford to buy their first home. But at the moment, if you're a young person in your 20s, your 30s or even your 40s on an average income, the chances of you being able to buy a home, even if you have the First Home Super Saver Scheme, is just a complete fantasy. No-one can see their way through to that. They just cannot see their way through to being able to do that. So actually dealing with supply is fundamental if we are going to reduce the cost of housing and enable more people to buy their first homes.

The second thing we need to be doing is not just saying, 'Let the market rip in terms of what they can charge for rents.' Unlimited rent increases should be illegal. We need to have rent controls, particularly whilst we have that massive shortage of supply. Just as the Real Estate Institute have told us in the rental inquiry, it is whatever the market will bear. It's unconscionable. It's obscene. It really is. It means that people are being made homeless. They are being evicted because the rents are going up. We need to have rent controls.

The evidence to the rental inquiry that I've been chairing is very clear that rent controls work and life goes on. In fact, here in the ACT, it would surprise you to know, there have been rent controls in place largely limiting the increase of rents to CPI plus a bit more for over 20 years, since the mid-1990s. The sky has not fallen in. Landlords continued to invest in property. There has continued to be rental property here. But rents have not gone up as much here as they have in other parts of the country.

The third thing we need to be doing is reducing those tax incentives that treat housing as an investment rather than as a human right. We need to get rid of the excesses of negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts, which are costing the budget bottom line billions of dollars every year that should instead be invested in public and affordable housing. The Greens policy is that negative gearing should be restricted to only one property, rather than people being able to negatively gear a whole portfolio of properties. We need to tackle the capital gains tax discounts. Again, all they end up doing is making property investors a lot of money. The cost of housing, whether to buy or to rent, absolutely skyrockets. The bill that we are talking about today, which is dealing with the intersection of our tax system and housing, in this schedule really goes to the heart of the sorts of changes that can be made in this place. We can actually change our tax settings to make housing more affordable. That's what we need to be doing.

We hear heartbreaking stories of people living with their kids in cars. A woman who gave evidence to a rental inquiry last week told us that she could no longer afford to live in the house she'd been renting for the last decade. She was a victim of family violence, and she was paying something like 70 per cent of her income in rent. She sadly decided she had to leave her family home with her two kids. There was nowhere else that she was going to be able to afford to rent. It was impossible for her to find an affordable rental property that meant she could pay the rent, put food on the table for her kids and cover all the other expenses of living, so she'd made the decision that she was going to go and live in a caravan on a relative's property in outback New South Wales.

It didn't have a bathroom. It didn't have a kitchen. It didn't even have a toilet. It was going to be 40-plus degrees in summer. It was going to be zero degrees or below in winter. She was hoping it was going to be okay for her 10-year-old and her five-year-old—her 10-year-old is autistic, as well—that they were going to be living in this caravan, but she was going to give it a go because she just couldn't afford anywhere else. These are the heartbreaking, traumatic stories that are happening across this country at the moment. It is an absolute blight on us that we have hundreds of thousands of people who are struggling, who are living with the financial stress of not being able to afford to keep a decent roof over their head, and who wake up every day and worry about how they will keep their life and their home together.

We need to make changes. We can make changes. As I said, the Greens aren't going to oppose the sorts of changes that are here now, but they are not the key things we need to be doing. We need to invest more in public and affordable housing. We need to make sure that unlimited rent increases are illegal. We need to change the tax concessions. We need to actually acknowledge that housing is a human right, rather than treating it as a commodity. These are all things this government could be doing, and they are all things the Greens are going to keep on campaigning for. We really want to see the government pay proper attention and make these changes, and that is very possible for them to do.

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023, amongst other things, enhances the tax office's powers to deal with applications for the First Home Super Saver Scheme. These are sensible enough changes, as my colleagues have said. We won't oppose them. But they do raise this important issue about the affordability of housing supply and the housing crisis. This policy is just another demand-side measure that pushes up property prices while home ownership is going down at the same time.

As an economist, I know that any measure on housing that increases spending will have the very simple effect of increasing the price of the commodity, increasing demand and pushing up those prices. Without a massive increase in supply, the problem just gets worse.

But it is especially worse and getting much harder for young people. Our young people are negatively affected across our country by what we're witnessing in the housing market. I'm a member of a generation, like so many in this place, who could, as with many other generations, afford to buy a house, to take out and meet the cost of a mortgage on an average wage. This is now beyond the current generations of 20-, 30- and 40-year-olds who cannot buy a home. Their circumstances more broadly are also much worse than previous generations' circumstances. Many of them carry very significant HECS debts. That gets in the way of taking out a mortgage. Many have spent many years employed in insecure jobs, many of them low paid. A quarter of our labour market is in insecure work, in casual jobs in particular, and young people are especially affected. We also recently saw in the 2023 Intergenerational report demographics coming down the pipe, which means we expect these young people, who struggled so hard to get in the labour market on insecure jobs and to accumulate assets and income, to pick up the demographic tab to look after the older generations and the demographic changes that are really significantly going to affect spending in our country in the generations ahead. The Intergenerational report laid all of that reality out, and the costs for future generations are very significant.

In my state, housing prices have gone through the roof. In South Australia, we are in the midst of a massive crisis both in homeownership and in the rental market. I ride my bike very regularly through the parklands around Adelaide, and we also have a very significant and growing crisis of homelessness on the streets of our city. We need to deal with these questions in a way and at a level that we have never done before, and the Housing Australia Future Fund is an inadequate response, as is increasing the demand through measures like that proposed in this bill. Housing cannot be seen as an asset class, a product for the means of accumulating wealth, as opposed to a roof over people's head to meet the basic need of a decent life.

Without a home, it's incredibly difficult to hold down a job. It's very difficult to raise a family and look after the people you love, and you cannot form a community without housing security. A first homebuyer support measure like this—a tweak—won't make a real difference to housing affordability, especially for young people. It will instead drive up prices.

Housing affordability in South Australia has never been worse, as a new report revealed in recent days. It now takes six years to save for a deposit, and most homes are out of reach for the average person. This is a really damning problem in such a wealthy country. We have a housing affordability index where the latest data, released just last week, reveals that housing affordability is at its worst level in at least three decades in South Australia. According to the index, mortgage repayments for a median-priced home as a share of income are now at a record high, well above levels in 1989, when I bought a home, and higher than the previous peaks in 2008. Repayments on a median-priced home are at $575,000. This figure is an average of all houses and unit sizes across South Australia in the past 12 months. They have now surged to 35 per cent of the average household income, the highest level on record. Of all homes sold in the last 12 months in South Australia, median-income households—that's those earning around $87,000 a year—could afford just 13 per cent. But the choice is much worse for people who are on lower salaries. For example, on the bottom 20th percentile, those people earning around $41,000 could afford just three per cent of homes in our state.

Housing affordability is beyond the reach of so many South Australians now. As I said, it takes a little longer than six years to save just a 20 per cent deposit, compared to about 2½ years in 1990. And high rents—rents that we've never seen before in our state—make it absolutely impossible for too many young people to save a deposit and to begin to work towards homeownership. Any kind of increase or more accessibility to the First Home Super Saver scheme won't save them, and neither will the HAFF. It is not enough to deal with the crisis that we face. This recent report on housing affordability in South Australia said:

This deterioration in affordability has been driven by a dramatic rise in mortgage rates, combined with rising home prices over recent years.

It's incredibly challenging for young people or anyone else who's trying to get into the housing market, and it is a major driver of intergenerational inequality. We've heard real estate agents and the real estate industry saying that when a relatively affordable home comes on the market, investors jump at it as quickly as first home buyers, and a lot of times the investors get there first and pay more. That puts a lot of pressure on first home buyers who are competing with a large pool of buyers who are chasing an asset not a roof over their heads. The buyers are still there; they're frustrated, and young people, in particular, are missing out.

We know that, over recent decades, wage growth simply hasn't kept up with skyrocketing property prices and skyrocketing rents, so saving for a deposit, especially when the cost of everything is going up very fast around everybody, is a major barrier for our first home buyers. Buying a home is out of reach for too many Australians, and the HAFF will not fix it. We need policies that build more public and affordable housing while also taking the heat out of prices, which requires ending negative gearing for multiple properties and cutting the capital gains tax discount. This super home saver simply adds to the problems of induced artificial demand, propping up investors who get to reduce their income tax by running a loss on the rent and then get to boost their profits when they sell a house by only paying 50 per cent capital gains tax. To put it another way, the tax you pay on selling a property is half what it would be if you earned the same amount from a job. With our tax system you pay more tax on income from work than if you speculate on property, and that is just wrong.

We have to fix our tax system. We need to build a lot more affordable houses across our country, and we need to cap rents so that people can afford a rental property and have a shot at accumulating a deposit so they can move into homeownership. And we need to stop looking at housing as an asset for the wealthy to accumulate more wealth. It is vitally important to adjust society for an inclusive society for a decent life for people across the income scale, and it is absolutely vital if we're going to be serious about addressing the widening intergenerational inequality that characterises our country.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023 is an important piece of legislative reform that is being engaged here. Financial services reform is, of course, a dry subject matter, but it's important. It actually matters. For investors, it matters for certainty and it matters for confidence. There are several pieces of legislation that the Senate will deal with today under the various Treasury laws amendment bills that are before the Senate—measures No. 3 and measures No. 1, at the very least.

These matters are being administered for the government by Mr Jones, and my understanding is that, up until May of this year, they were being administered for the coalition by the much lamented Mr Robert. Mr Robert has been gone for some time. I think he left the parliament in an unhappy fashion in May of this year. Much has been said about Mr Robert's contribution as a member of parliament and as a minister in the government of his friend Mr Morrison. Much has been said about that, and much more will be said about that.

It reminds me of a football player who today departed Greek football team Volos. They issued a statement after he got the sack. He got booted out in very unhappy circumstances after conceding a penalty in the team's match against AEK. His name is Dominik Kruzliak. The club said, 'We don't wish him well in the future, but we will certainly remember him.' I think there's a very strong parallel with the career of Mr Robert. There are very few fans of his—apart from Mr Morrison—who can be found on the other side of the chamber here. There was a little bit of back-slapping—

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Ayres, I remind you of standing order 193, on personal reflections on members of other houses. You are coming perilously close to infringing on that order, and I'd ask you to come back to the substance of the matter, which is the Treasury Laws Amendment (2023 Measures No. 3) Bill 2023.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I intend to stay slightly less than perilously close. That is my intention. I will come to the substance of the bill, because, while there has been much reflection on that career, what there has not been from those opposite is a focus on the issues that matter in his previous portfolio area. In fact, they gave it so little attention that replacement appointments have not been made. There is a drift. There is lots of throwing of rocks at initiatives that the government undertakes, whether in relation to the area dealt with in this bill or in the other bill that's in front of this chamber. But, on the hard work of engaging with the reform, there has been no appointment, no engagement and no work. We are all aware of the jockeying that's going on around these issues, but Mr Dutton and Mr Taylor, apparently in charge of economic affairs for what passes as the opposition in this place, are unable, because of their internal incapacity, to make a key appointment in this portfolio area of responsibility. That becomes clearer every day—four months, five months and then six months of an incapacity to make that appointment. The 'no-alition's' approach to economic policy, which is to say no to every substantial reform but not to offer any substance in terms of their own approach, becomes starker every day. I know these bits of reform are dry material, but they actually do matter, and it would make a difference if this coalition opposition were up to the task of economic management and making a real, substantial contribution to economic policy in this place.

The Albanese government is all about protecting the interests of consumers. That means safe, well-regulated consumer markets for credit products. That's a core element of a strong and inclusive economy. There's a series of reforms in this bill that go to achieving that broad framework, and I want to take the Senate through those reforms in some detail. Firstly, schedule 1 to the bill introduces new rules that prohibit schemes designed to avoid the application of a product intervention order in relation to a credit facility made under part 7.9A of the Corporations Act 2001. That means that a person or a business can't respond to a product intervention order by engaging in avoidance activity that isn't covered by the order but results in a similar detriment to consumers. This is important reform that delivers certainty and discourages the kind of behaviour that previous royal commissions have called out. Reform has been demanded, and proposals were made but never implemented by the previous government. It's an ongoing pattern—all talk, all press release and no delivery in this area of reform, like so many other areas of reform. You can see it in question time in a whole lot of areas—they're demanding reform from the government in areas where, singularly, over the course of a decade, they were unable to bring themselves to make reforms.

Schedule 1 supplements the Financial Sector Reform Act 2022, which contains anti-avoidance measures to encourage compliance with the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, and for product intervention orders made under the credit act with a view to minimising consumer harm. Schedule 1 implements equivalent provisions into the Corporations Act.

Schedule 2 to the bill amends the Corporations Act to deliver on this government's election commitment to better recognise the experience of existing financial advisers. It also addresses limitations in the current framework for new entrants. Since the requirement for financial advisers to complete further study was introduced, the number of practising advisors has decreased from approximately 28,000 at its peak to 16,300 advisers currently in the system. In addition, new financial advisers have been unable to meet the education requirements for technical reasons, which has prevented their entry into the industry. The amendments allow experienced advisers with at least 10 years of experience and a clean record, who have passed the exam, to remain in the industry without needing to complete additional education. They will also facilitate entry into the system for new entries. That is achieving the policy objective that was called out so clearly in the royal commission, without providing unnecessary hurdles to growth and turnover in this important sector of the financial services industry. Importantly, in terms of reaching the policy outcome, it will ensure that consumers have access to adequate, properly founded, independent financial advice.

Timely passage of this legislation will give experienced advisers certainty as to their future in the industry—timely passage of the legislation, which is not to be frustrated by full 15-minute contributions over the course of the debate. I am very confident that over the course of today we will see the Senate have a good discussion of these matters and vote in a timely way to ensure that certainty is delivered to this important sector.

It is much maligned, Senator Hume, by people around the place. Effectively, because of the findings of the royal commission, this important cohort of advisers—who play an important function in our economy—were all maligned because of the behaviour of some, and this piece of legislative reform does mean that there will be certainty and confidence for this sector. It will provide a good outcome for consumers and a good outcome for the professionals in this sector. If the legislation were not to pass, though, advisers would need to complete up to eight tertiary-level units before 1 January 2026 in order to keep providing that financial advice to their clients.

Schedule 3, importantly, is designed to facilitate competitive outcomes in the provision of clearing and settlement services for cash equities traded in Australia. The ASX group currently has a monopoly over clearing and settlement services for cash equities traded in Australia. The reforms come from recommendations made by the Council of Financial Regulators following reviews into the market for cash equities clearing and settlement in 2012 and 2015. Subsequent to those reviews, the Council of Financial Regulators published three policy statements, which these reforms in this legislation implement.

The reforms will give the Australian Securities and Investments Commission a rule-making power, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission an arbitration power, in relation to cash and settlement services covered by ministerial determination and declaration respectively. That rulemaking power will allow ASIC to write rules to ensure that competition, if it emerges, is safe and effective in terms of its outcomes for consumers and for the health of the industry more broadly, and, in the meantime, ensure that outcomes for users of cash and settlement services are similar to those that would be expected in a competitive environment. The arbitration power will allow the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to make binding decisions about the terms of access to cash and settlement services, including price, where negotiations between a provider which has monopoly or significant market power and a user of cash and settlement services have broken down.

Schedule 4 of the bill is about improving the flexibility of the First Home Super Saver Scheme. I listened carefully to the contributions of the two Greens party senators in relation to this matter. Schedule 4 of the bill makes a number of technical amendments that provide users with greater flexibility to correct mistakes made during the First Home Super Saver Scheme release process. Those amendments will increase the discretion of the Commissioner of Taxation to amend and revoke applications to have funds released under the FHSS scheme. This is dry material, indeed, but it's important reform. I commend it to the Senate.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to thank those senators who have contributed to the debate, and particularly my colleague Senator Ayres. Schedule 1 to the bill introduces new rules that prohibit schemes designed to avoid the application of a product intervention order made under part 7.9A of the Corporations Act 2001 in relation to a credit facility.

Safe, well-regulated consumer markets for credit products are a core element of a strong and inclusive economy. That is why the Australian government introduced reforms to the regulation of payday lending and consumer leases through the Financial Sector Reform Act 2022. These changes gave effect to the government's response to the recommendations of the 2016 Review of the small amount credit contract laws report, which included a recommendation to introduce laws to prohibit avoidance behaviour. The Financial Sector Reform Act 2022 introduced anti-avoidance provisions with respect to Australian Securities and Investments Commission—ASIC—product intervention orders made under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009. This bill extends those provisions to product intervention orders made under the Corporations Act 2001. ASIC has made several product intervention orders under the Corporations Act 2001 targeting predatory lending products that cause significant consumer harm. This amendment will help ensure that a person or business cannot respond to a product intervention order by engaging in avoidance activity that is not covered by the order but results in similar detriment to consumers.

Schedule 2 delivers on the government's election commitment to better recognise the experience of long-serving financial advisers. Together with the amendments to address technical limitations in the new-entrants framework, schedule 2 resolves a number of the practical implementation issues that industry has faced. Schedule 2 supports the financial advice industry to provide Australians with high-quality financial advice.

The reforms in schedule 3 will give certainty to industry that clearing and settlement services will be provided on a fair, reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory basis. They will also give prospective competitors in the provision of clearing and settlement services certainty about regulators' expectations of their conduct should they be granted a licence to provide these services. ASIC's power will allow it to set and enforce rules in relation to clearing and settlement services in either a monopoly or competitive environment. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's powers will allow it to make timely and binding resolutions to access disputes where commercial negotiations have failed. These reforms have been long recommended by the Council of Financial Regulators and endorsed by industry stakeholders. They strike the right balance between empowering regulators, giving certainty to industry, promoting competition and innovation and ensuring financial system stability.

Schedule 4 to the bill will make technical changes to improve the operation of the First Home Super Saver Scheme by affording the Commissioner of Taxation and users of the scheme greater flexibility to correct mistakes and avoid adverse financial outcomes. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.