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

At the request of Senator Dean Smith, I seek leave to withdraw the amendments circulated in the name of the senator, on sheet 2669, to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes and Other Measures) Bill 2024.

Leave granted.

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes and Other Measures) Bill 2024. The coalition had a number of significant concerns about this bill in the form in which it was introduced in the other place. We made these concerns clear to the government, and I am very glad that the government has moved to address these concerns in its amendments that it already moved in the other place and in the amendments it has indicated that it will move today in this chamber.

On the basis of these amendments, the coalition will be supporting this bill. This bill represents the first legislative response to the Quality of Advice Review, commissioned by the former coalition government and delivered to the government in December 2022. This review was a significant initiative, commissioned by the former coalition government, and it was aimed specifically at improving the provision of financial advice for Australians. We are incredibly proud of the Quality of Advice Review and of the work that Michelle Levy did in preparing it. Financial advice should be accessible, and it should be affordable for all Australians. Right now, it is often neither.

It's crucial to remember that this initiative was driven by our commitment to ensuring that Australians can access quality advice to secure their own financial futures. However, we cannot ignore the significant delay in the introduction of this bill. This delay has caused deep uncertainty and concern within our struggling financial advice sector. Despite the comprehensiveness of the coalition's response to the Hayne royal commission, this Labor government has continued to wrap this sector with additional administrative burdens that lead to higher fees and higher taxes, and ultimately make advice less affordable and less accessible for ordinary, everyday Australians.

The protracted delay by this government in responding to the Quality of Advice Review has been led by this deeply disengaged, distracted and, quite frankly, disingenuous Assistant Treasurer, and it's left the financial advice industry in a state of limbo, facing uncertainty and instability—something that, in opposition, the current Assistant Treasurer vowed he would fix. He was very quick to criticise the coalition for implementing professionalisation of this sector and for implementing the recommendations of the Hayne royal commission, but then, once in government, his tune changed significantly. In fact, it's now taken Mr Jones a staggering 17 months to begin to respond to this important, clear, well-received and industry supported review. This is what happens when an Assistant Treasurer's instructions from the industry super fund lobbies get lost in the mail or don't come at all: he sits on his hands and he dithers.

In his time in this portfolio, Mr Jones has left a trail of destruction and administrative malpractice behind him. Just yesterday, we saw the government embarrassed into agreeing to list his Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022, which has been languishing on the program for more than a year, on the program for next August.

This is a bill that has bipartisan support. It could have gone through in non-controversial legislation months ago, and the industry has been crying out for that change. Yet somehow the bill has been allowed to languish there because the Assistant Treasurer has not been doing his job. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the conversation between the Assistant Treasurer and his boss, the Treasurer, took place, when he noticed that—just one more mess the Treasurer has had to sort out, caused by an Assistant Treasurer forced upon him because the Prime Minister doesn't necessarily trust him. We can see that from the report in the AFR on Monday, where Phil Coorey pointed out that the Prime Minister is now overriding the budget protocols set by the Treasurer and taking over policy approval unilaterally. This is because the Prime Minister doesn't trust the Treasurer and instead has an Assistant Treasurer and an assistant minister to the Treasurer to keep an eye on the Treasurer. Unfortunately, neither of those two gentlemen are doing their job.

In the case of this bill, instead of using the time to draft considered legislation, the minister has failed to get the very basics right, creating more problems than solutions. And of course this is not Minister Jones's first rodeo in creating more problems than he has been solving. He has the significant distinction in his caucus for potentially being the only minister that could compete with Minister Giles for hopelessness. Perhaps we will see a changing of the guard in the next few weeks. But I digress.

Our financial advice industry and our financial advisers deserve a regulatory framework that allows them to expand their client bases to better serve Australians. We must secure the future of our financial advice sector and prevent a scenario in which Australians are underadvised, underinsured and potentially even underbanked. It was essential that the government fix the errors in this bill to ensure that the bill fulfils its intended purpose of improving financial outcomes for all Australians, and we are very glad they have now finally done this.

The financial advice sector plays a critical role in ensuring that Australians can make informed decisions about their own finances, and any legislation affecting this sector must be very carefully crafted and error free. The government has been shamed into moving amendments that again fix this mess. The Assistant Treasurer has proven himself to be out of touch, out of his depth, and unable to deliver meaningful reforms that benefit the financial advice sector and, by extension, benefit all Australians.

In conclusion, while the coalition will now support this bill because of the amendments that are being moved, we condemn the government and this minister for making it so hard to simply get the right outcome for Australian financial advisers.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes and Other Measures) Bill 2024, and I want to start by saying that it is becoming a habit of this government to put to the parliament bills that cover a variety of dispersed topics, to cram them into one Treasury laws amendment bill and then expect the parliament to just whack it through. It is not the best way of engaging with others in this place on the detail of these bills. And it is certainly not the best way of ensuring that members of the community, stakeholders and impacted industry groups can have their concerns heard and responded to.

We have here today a bill that does a whole lot of things in relation to giving advice on super, and we just heard Senator Hume talk a bit about that. Then there is a discrete section of the bill that talks about establishing a new location tax offset for the film industry—totally different industries, totally different topics, totally different stakeholders. And the government has tried to just whack it all in together because they are slow to get moving on a whole bunch of promises that they have made.

In relation to the super elements of this bill and the government's newly rushed and circulated amendments for financial advice to be paid out of clients' superannuation balances, I just want to make it clear we haven't had time to consider these amendments. They have been rushed into the parliament this morning. There's been a deal done with the Dutton coalition. It's all being done under the cover of the chaos that this government is currently in. The coalition, for months and months now, have played block, block, block and said, 'No, no, no,' on all government activities. Then, all of a sudden, when the government's in crisis and there's a lot of political mess going on for the Albanese government, the Liberal Party decide to flick some things through, hoping that nobody notices. You can see what happened here. When the coalition teams up with the Labor Party, you get rushed legislation, rushed amendments and bad outcomes for people.

Senators in this place, particularly in the Greens and on the crossbench, haven't had time to consider these amendments. But apparently it doesn't matter because the two-party system will deliver the numbers and they can whack it on through. They like the rush and the guillotine when it suits them. We've heard for weeks the crying out, squealing and whining from the coalition about the parliament being efficient and passing legislation. They've been squealing about the use of guillotines. But, when it suits them, they get on and do it. That's what we have seen here today.

Senators other than those in the Liberal Party—I don't even think the National Party was consulted on these—have had no time to consult on and scrutinise these amendments adequately. But, at first blush, we have concerns. We think that these changes could re-ignite some of the problems that the banking royal commission tried to stamp out. The government's amendment—let's be clear—is removing any reference to the financial advice having to relate to members' interest in a super fund. They are also striking out the provisions that ensure financial advisers can't price-gouge their clients. What? Why would you scrap that unless you're doing the bidding of the big end of town, thanks to the Liberal Party? We haven't had time to be convinced that this won't lead to a situation where financial advisers can spruik to a potential client something like: 'I can give you a range of financial advice relating to negative gearing, a new investment property, superannuation or where you put your savings. But the best part is you don't have to pay for it. We can just charge the fee to your super account.' This the is type of insidious, dishonest, tricky behaviour that the banking royal commission called out and said needed to be cleaned up.

But, of course, the government is in a state of desperation today to get a whole lot of bills through a guillotine, so they falter, they fold and they bow to the pressure of the Liberal Party. Let's make it clear: the Liberal Party are never going to be acting in the best interests of people when it comes to superannuation. They hate superannuation. They don't like it. It's in their blood not to like the super system. So any chance they get to wreck it or undermine it they will take. Here we have the government rolling out the red carpet this morning.

For regular, everyday people, super balances are out of sight and out of mind. Financial advisers can then charge excessive fees with less scrutiny than if their client was paying for it out of their pocket. They've tried these tricks before. We've seen the manipulation of people that happens by financial advisers and financial institutions. They pick on vulnerable people. They can make more of a margin on their advice. At the end of the day, it is the individual customer, the holder of that superannuation account, who suffers. It's so un-Labor. You are a Labor government and you're just undermining your own superannuation system. Get a spine! We'll be voting against these amendments, but it won't matter in this place because you've done a deal with the Dutton coalition to undermine super and to undermine regular people and their retirement savings.

In relation to the other part of the bill that the Greens have—

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Hanson-Young. Pursuant to the earlier motion, we are now going to the consideration of bills as arranged by the chamber.