With just three parliamentary sitting weeks left before the year ends and an election looming, the clock is ticking for the government to act on the Quality of Advice Review’s (QAR) final report, which has now sat on Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones’ desk for 650 days.
In a statement marking the occasion, shadow financial services minister Luke Howarth lashed out at the government for breaking its promise to financial advisers, accusing it of not only failing to reduce their costs but also leaving the financial advice sector mired in a “hot mess” of legislation.
Howarth argued that over the 650 days since receiving the final QAR report, the government has diluted Levy’s key recommendations, botched the initial round of reforms, and stalled on implementing critical red tape-cutting measures.
“Like most of its financial services reform agenda, advice reforms have been left to the last minute and are clearly not a priority for this government,” Howarth said.
The advice profession is eagerly awaiting the long-overdue draft legislation for the second tranche of the government’s Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms. While behind-the-scenes discussions are said to be ongoing, there’s still no date set for when the minister might announce the start of a formal consultation process.
Speaking to ifa last week, the CEO of the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA), Sarah Abood, said she hopes Jones’ recent focus on scams isn’t coming at the expense of DBFO progress.
“Scams are uncontroversial, no one is going to say, ‘I think you’re being a bit too hard on scammers, you have to lighten up’. So, it’s more straightforward in policy terms,” Abood said.
“I certainly would hope that that focus wouldn’t come at the expense of needing to solve the issues in the advice profession, which the minister has said on many occasions he understands and feels they are important.”
According to Howarth, the sector has every right to second-guess whether the draft legislation will actually materialise.
“The industry was dismayed to see the Assistant Treasurer pick and choose Michelle Levy’s recommendations and water down its deregulatory reforms but hopeful he would progress what survived in a timely manner. 650 days have now passed since Jones was handed Levy’s final report and he has been on a go-slow ever since,” the shadow financial services minister said.
He added that unlike the government, which he criticised for “continually scapegoating” its department and blaming a lack of legislative drafters for its shortcomings, the Coalition is committed to fully implement the QAR review.
“The Coalition would implement the Levy review in full and, unlike the government, we won’t treat this as the end of the road for deregulation. This is the beginning, not the end for cutting red tape for financial professionals.”
All talk no action the Albo way!
Until lawyer-created ANNUAL Fee Renewal Form Red Tape (Corps Act Act 962F – 962H) is completely struck out, legislation that does NOT exist in any other nation, the QAR changes will fail to substantially solve the retail advice shortfall crisis. QAR PLUS elimination of the ANNUAL Fee Renewal Forms is the only workable solution to bring back cost-affordable financial advice to over 2 million Australians currently without service support. And Jones is a lawyer. Lol
It doesn’t take a Financial Adviser to do the maths on this one. 15,000 Advisers now, will equal 10,000 Advisers in 12 months time. Not a shred of confidence left in this industry.
Surely no one is actually surprised by this. When has Government delivered anything for advisers apart from more pain and misery. And that is from both sides.
As a financial planner the only thing worse than the ALP are the Liberal / Nationals. Time to leave the profession as nothing positive will happen for the foreseeable future.
Quick wind and the Hot Mess reductions delivered by Jonesy:
– Triples ASIC Adviser Levy = increase Advice costs
– GST RITC stopped = 7.5% GST increase Advice costs
– CSLR excludes MIS yet includes Dixon’s MIS fiasco = $8k per Adviser potential liability, $1300 / Adviser already paid = increase Adviser costs.
– Zero reduction in BS Red Tape compliance. Only more Hot Mess to deal with.
– Zero quick wins achieved.
Great job Jonesy = NOT !!!!
There will be no red tape relief within the next 3 years.
I am ecstatic that I am nearing the end of my time in the industry.
What a farce, what a disgrace.
I never want to hear “we need more people receiving advice for a more reasonable cost” again.
It would be soooo easy to fix……..
Let’s not forget that QAR only addressed about 30% of the problems of bad regulation. There was a whole bunch of stuff that was specifically excluded from its terms of reference, or wasn’t even considered. There were also further problems piled on top of the existing problems after Jones became minister. In particular increased ASIC fees and the CSLR debacle. Then there is the other huge cause of bad regulation that is operational rather than legislative in nature – the extreme bias and incompetence of regulators.
After 650 days, Jones has only implemented about 10% of QAR, which if implemented in full would only fix about 30% of the problems. So he has fixed 3% of the hot mess, with no likelihood of fixing any of the other 97% before the next election.
Incompetent Jones leaves behind a steaming hot mess. He’s an embarrassment for Labor which is already an embarrassment to our country.
Why is anyone surprised?
Steven Jones and Labor are not now, or ever have been friends of our profession!
These delays would be laughable enough if Jones hadn’t shot his mouth off about the “quick wins” he was going to provide. Two years of almost no progress! Imagine if they weren’t trying……….oh, wait!