Jacqui Lambie, Ricky Muir break ranks in 'coalition of common sense' against financial advice laws

Updated

The Federal Government has potentially been dealt a major blow, with four crossbench senators, including Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir, teaming up with Labor and the Greens to scrap its changes to financial advice laws.

The Government struck a deal with the Palmer United Party (PUP) in July to push its changes to Labor's Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) laws through the Senate.

Labor strongly opposed the changes and today revealed it had secured the support it needed in the Senate to undo that deal and reverse the Government's regulations.

Senator Lambie, Senator Muir, Senator John Madigan and Senator Nick Xenophon announced they were uniting to oppose the laws.

It came on the same day that Senator Lambie was removed as deputy PUP Senate leader and deputy whip of the party for failing to attend three party meetings this week.

Senator Xenophon held a press conference this morning to explain the decision to vote against the financial advice laws.

He was flanked by Labor's Sam Dastyari, Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson and senators Madigan, Lambie and Muir, who has previously formed an alliance with PUP.

"Despite our political differences, we have banded together as a coalition of common sense," Senator Xenophon said.

"Our common, unequivocal objective is to have the Government's FoFA regulations disallowed today in the Senate because they are unambiguously bad for consumers."

Senator Xenophon noted that Senator Lambie and Senator Muir had shifted their position on the FoFA issue.

"It's particularly pleasing that senators Lambie and Muir have listened to the concerns of consumers, and particularly victims, to come to this position," Senator Xenophon said.

There were fiery scenes in the Senate when the disallowance motion was introduced, with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann accusing Labor and the Greens of "holding a gun to the Government's head" and dealing with the issue in a reckless and irresponsible manner.

"Whatever you think about the legislation in substance, the regulation has been the law of the land for four months," he told the Senate.

"You gave notice at 7:00pm last night that you wanted to get rid of those regulations today but there's no need to deal with this today.

"This can actually be dealt with by 27 November next week so we could let this lie on the table and continue the conversation."

Cormann says disallowing changes promotes commercial interests of unions

Senator Cormann said disallowing the FoFA changes would increase costs for consumers and reduce competition in the market.

"This is all about the commercial interests of the Labor Party's main shareholder - the union movement," he said.

"We've got the union movement with a clear commercial interest in large industry super funds who are fighting very hard for market share in the financial services market across Australia."

Senator Dastyari told the Chamber protecting consumers and the victims of financial crime should be the Senate's priority.

"There's a reason why every single consumer and advocacy group in this country believes these are bad laws, that these are bad regulations and that these should not be supported," he said.

"These regulations are a wish list for power brokers in the industry."

Topics: federal-government, parliament, government-and-politics, consumer-finance, australia

First posted