Consumers join FoFA debate

Christopher Zinn has no idea what he is talking about. How can he make these comments from his less than ivory tower? This is nothing more than a concocted scare campaign from a bunch of lefties who still can't accept that they lost the election and we now have adults in charge of the government again. Not a bunch who only act in the best interests of their union mates. Time for truth to be told about the proposed changes, not straight out lies by those pushing their own vested interests.

Amazing how EXACTLY 100 people joined this zeros group. CHOICE has 90,000 teachers and public servants. Anyone actually know a member of this self appointed group?

Obviously Mr. Zinn hasn't understood (or doesn't want people to understand) what the issues are surrounding the original draft of the Fiduciary Responsibility part of the legislation. This is a very complex area of the law. The way it was originally drafted the catch all part of it would have made it very difficult for advisers to provide scaled advice (when under the catch all clause they are notionally responsible for investigating all areas of a clients finances). The idea of scaled advice is to reduce the cost to consumers seeking limited advice. An interesting point is how "advisers", in the employ of an industry fund for example would be able to adequately advise clients on all their financial planning needs, cash flow modelling, gearing, business insurances, aged care etc. etc. How would fiduciary duty apply to them? If they are only providing intra fund advice can they really call themselves "advisers", or are they product consultants?

This is the usual misinformation campaign, which facilitates a bit of media grandstanding. So far the media representations I've seen don't address the real issues facing consumers or advisers. Here we have an industry being assailed from all directions with over complicated regulations, 24/7 consumer funded product flogging misinformation campaigns full of negative innuendo and politicians enshrining in legislation protections for their quasi-Socialist cronies.

If he's such a wonderful consumer advocate why isn't Mr. Zinn publicising the sizable fees being extracted by union officials from certain super funds and the $900 per day jobs for the boys around Fair Work Australia, put in place by the previous Labor Government?