Legislation for the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) will not be debated prior to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (PJC) delivering its findings on 29 February.
Confusion over the House of Representatives upcoming schedule seems to be behind Friday’s war of words between the Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Bill Shorten, and Shadow Financial Services Minister Mathias Cormann.
A draft list of legislation to be considered by the House of Representatives in the week of 13-16 February, as circulated by the government and including both FoFA Bills and the MySuper Bill, was seized on by Senator Cormann’s office earlier today.
“Bill Shorten is treating the Parliament with contempt by bringing the FoFA legislation on for debate in Parliament before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services has even delivered its report and recommendations,” he said in a statement.
“If the Prime Minister is too weak to pull Bill Shorten into line over this, the Independents must work with us to stop the government from bringing FoFA and MySuper on for debate until after the PJC has had a chance to put its views on these Bills to the Parliament.”
However a spokesperson for Minister Shorten told PPO it was much ado about nothing.
“Experienced Members of the House of Representatives know programs that far in advance should not be taken as gospel,” said a statement from the Minister’s office.
“Long-standing practice has been for the second or forward week of the draft forward program to list bills available to the House with the actual debate program adjusted week by week.
“Therefore the second week shows what is on the horizon but shouldn’t be interpreted as final listing of what will be debated that week.”
Mark Rantall, chief executive of the Financial Planning Association, says the FPA could not support any moves to bring forward the debate.
“We do not support the bills being debated prior to due process being undertaken,” Rantall says.
He says that includes “the handing down of the PJC report, which is due at the end of February; the Senate Estimates Committee, which is due to report to Parliament by the end of March; and we would think a regulatory impact statement is required for such wide-ranging reform that will have a major impact on the industry”.
So typical. Shorten’s comments get more ridiculous and more offensive by the day. “long standing practices” – get real. Why do decent hard working professionals have to suffer at the hands of an inept Government. The sooner this lot go, the better.
Well, here we have a minister relying on the phrases like “long standing practices” etc etc and then not following the same protocols by refusing to have a full regulatory impact statement prepared before the legislation is drafted…now there’s consistency…policy formulation on the run.
Maybe Shorten’s mind is on other things at the moment…like a soft leather chair and a big house overlooking the Harbour and Opera House..?
No surprise in any of this, exactly what you would expect from Bill Shorten. History will judge him and it will not be pretty. Unfortunately many of us who have given our whole life to this Industry,in my case from March 1977,will be damaged by this inept, pathetic Government.