In an email to members, Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP) executive director Peter Johnston has reiterated the AIOFP’s longstanding call for advisers to educate clients on the issues impacting the sector to put pressure on the government at the upcoming federal election.
Johnston pointed to the recent groundswell from the Muslim Vote political movement, which was established following community anger at Labor’s handling of the war in Gaza, as an “encouraging scenario” for the advice community.
Coverage of the movement has quietened over the last month, but the strategy of targeting marginal Labor Party seats with large Muslim populations, as well as those of senior ALP politicians in what are generally considered safe seats, is similar to what the AIOFP is advocating.
“It’s about the ALP having to please pressure groups demanding attention before the election or suffer the consequences,” Johnston said.
He added that the 18 marginal and 21 “fairly marginal” ALP-held seats are the government’s Achilles’ heel.
“At the last election, the ALP won 77 seats of the 151, 58 to the Coalition and 16 to the crossbenchers. It looks mathematically challenging for the Coalition to form government, but not impossible,” Johnston said.
Doing some back-of-the envelope maths, he argued the 18 seats with a margin between 0.5 and 6 per cent would be decided by just 500 to 6,000 votes.
“We only need a handful of advisers and their clients in some seats to be the kingmaker,” he added.
“Consent forms, risk commissions and the Dixon fiasco are our ‘middle east’ issues that the ALP must resolve before the next election or face stiff opposition from the advice community and their clients.
“Considering we have around 14,000 advisers and the average is 134 clients each, we have 1,876,000 potential votes across the nation.”
Importantly, Johnston said, advisers need to take note of the mantra that “our vote is for lease, not sale”.
“In other words, give us what we want now and on an ongoing basis. This is precisely why we are not exactly friends with the ALP at the moment,” he told members.
“Minister Jones started off well with the education pathways but has not acted in our members’ and their clients’ best interests over the past two years – and we have let him know that in very direct terms.”
According to Johnston, the AIOFP is currently awaiting “legal sign-off” for a political donation strategy.
“We need to be ‘in their face’ to get attention and what we want – remember, shrinking violets and fence-sitters normally get nowhere,” he said.
In a subsequent email, Johnston added: “We have the chance to make a big intimidating statement to Canberra that unless they leave us alone in future and fix some current issues this side of the election – they will suffer at the ballot box.
“To set the scene, the AIOFP will be writing directly to each marginal seat politician explaining the facts of life.”
The AIOFP has been signalling its intention to rally advisers politically for the last 12 months, while also spruiking the impact advisers played in former treasurer Josh Frydenberg losing his seat of Kooyong in the 2022 election.
“It should be clearly understood that our 2022 Kooyong marginal seat strategy and outcome has unsettled Canberra, what should be noted, however, is it can be used in any seat and against any political party at the time of our choosing,” Johnston said last year.
“This is what disturbs all sides of politics, it is therefore critical to continue with subtle posturing to remind and intimidate all stakeholders of our power.”
All I can say is, who set up the Financial Services Industry in such a way that it “birthed” your industry? Hint: it wasn’t the Coalition…
Remember where you came from.
AMP – 1849.
What a elitist comment! Remember where you came from? Half of us weren’t even around then.
More like treat others how they treat you, that’s the way it usually works.
The industry is nothing like it was back then, its evolved, so it dosen’t matter “where we came from”, what matters is where we are now.
I believe the comment is referring to Labor setting up Super – but I could be wrong?
I don’t think LNP will be any better for advisers.
I have been telling my advisers for years that a big chuck of their fees is to cover compliance costs.
Because that’s the truth.
My fees rose significantly on 1 July 2024 and if yours didn’t, I don’t know why ?
Compliance hurdles rose (again), they didn’t fall.
I don’t make the rules however I must follow them.
I can see my fees rising again next July.
Have these politicians no shame? Can’t they just put our country ahead of their selfish interests and save us advisers the ignominy of telling our clients our problems and how to vote for our selfish interests?
What dream land do you live in
Of course the politicians have no shame in looking after themselves income, prestige and power wise.
I told my clients about dixon and what we have to pay and they were truly shocked and cannot believe that the government is doing to us. They said they would not pay for the miss deeds of someone else in their industry how on earth do they get away with this..
Talk to your clients I think you will find the bill each planner has to pay will truly shock them
Unfortunately, the other 99% of the population just see it as some tax on BMW driving Advisers whilst providing consumers with additional protection and it’s a business cost. They don’t get it and Politicians appreciate the soft target.
The AIOFP is embarrassing us all. To think that Advisers are going to push a political agenda on their clients is ridiculous. Do they really think a coalition government is going to be any better? of course they won’t. QAR is the only change that is going to happen to our industry, they should focus on lobbying to get the right outcomes from that legislation, not getting Government offside by trying to get them voted out.
Nor to me their not!
Their having a crack, which is more than I can say for other groups supposedly representing their planners.
You don’t have to “push a political agenda on your clients (nor will I); but its a choice for each Planner
We are talking about a small P “political agenda” here. It doesn’t have to be directed at either of the main parties because BOTH have been guilty of listening to the rubbish that comes out of Treasury and ASIC for nearly a decade. CSLR was a baby of the Morrison government.
Treasury are very clever In that they juxtapose an apparent “consumer” argument about financial services as a whole, designed to implement control of the industry, by appealing to the political bias of the Minister sitting in front of them. The big end the town talks to the Liberals, and the industry funds and ASIC-funded consumer groups talk to Labor.
Both groups provide significant political funding to their political party of choice, and advisers don’t.
From where I sit, a marginal electorate campaign is our last resort.And furthermore it has worked before in the Tasmanian electorate of Bass in 1975, where advisers door-knocked the electorate resulting in the loss of the electorate from Labor after the resignation of Lance Barnard.The advisers were protesting against Gough Whitlam’s proposed national superannuation scheme.
We won the first battle but we lost the war in the early 1990s when Keating introduced compulsory superannuation contributions, Then adviser bodies went to sleep and the insurance companies and fund managers we had supported suddenly lined up to put their snouts in the trough of SGC.
It’s politics 101, and if we sit back and worry about whether or not we are talking politics to our clients, then we’ll all be stuffed
Sure, although no harm in providing information as to why advice costs as much s it does.
‘..not getting Government offside by trying to get them voted out.’
Just how do you think lobby groups such as the Pharmacy Guild, the Property Council of Australia and the Minerals Council get everything they want? We must learn how to threaten the politicians with their seats – that’s the only way they’ll get the message to lay off the industry.
Exactly, threatening them loss of seats, thus loss or power and privilege it exactly what they will listen too.
They may nod and smile and say they will do other things.
But at the end of the day, they will do what is needed to save their own bacon
All bad governments should be punished, regardless of whether the opposition wasn’t much better last time. It doesn’t matter which party is involved at any point in the cycle. Sooner or later one of the parties will wake up to themselves and start doing the right thing in government. That is the only party that should be supported for re-election.
Proud to have AIOFP. telling clients the truth about why their fees are what they are is disclosure – as the Govts wanted.
25 years in this industry and that softly soft approach has been a disastrous failure. I suspect you’ve been brainwashed by somebody claiming to represent advisers that will re-surface as some Government consultant in year 3.