Thank you, Blake, and thank you to the Financial Services Council for the invitation to be here at the Shaping Advice Summit.
Can I particularly acknowledge the advisers in the room.
You are the people who sit across the kitchen table with millions of Australians as they make the biggest financial decisions of their lives. That is not a small thing. It is one of the most important jobs in our economy.
Opening
The need to secure the future of financial services, economic growth, fiscal responsibility, tax reform and Australia’s long-term prosperity has never been more urgent. We need an economy that empowers Australians to realise their ambitions.
At its best, finance makes creation possible.
A healthy financial system does not simply move capital. It enlarges opportunity.
That is why the strength of financial services matters to every Australian, whether or not they ever enter a funds management office or read an investment prospectus.
And you are central to realising that ambition: Australia works when Australians can get ahead.
Not when government redistributes prosperity, but when self-starters can build it. The family saving for their first home. The couple planning their retirement. The small business owner backing themselves. The young Australian putting their first dollars into super and wondering what those dollars will be worth in forty years.
Doing so compels us to confront the growing gap between Australians who need financial advice and those who can afford or access it.
Every one of those Australians, at some point, needs advice. And every one of them deserves a financial system and a tax system that reward their effort instead of punishing it.
Australians need a financial system that protects people from misconduct without protecting them from choice.
The taxes Australians didn’t vote for
Let me start with the Budget, because everyone in this room is living with its consequences.
It raises a simple question: How can Australians plan for their future when a government doesn’t honour its election plans?
Before the last election, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer promised more than fifty times that they would not introduce new taxes on capital gains, trusts or the savings of ordinary Australians. Then they delivered a Budget that does exactly that: $273 billion in higher taxes, according to the Government’s own numbers. Taxes Australians didn’t vote for.
They are taxes on the family with an investment property. On the renter, who pays when supply dries up. On the first-home buyer, whose deposit savings are now in the Treasurer’s sights. On the small business held in a family trust. On the start-up founder deciding whether to build here or in Singapore.
At the National Press Club, I used the example of Sienna, a young founder who started her business from nothing. Her cost base is near zero, so the Government’s new indexation method gives her effectively no discount at all. The result is that, depending on how and when she exits, everything she has built—her work, her savings and her sacrifice—could face tax of up to 47 per cent. Even worse, the Government dismissed criticism by wishing that the Siennas of Australia would cast their eyes down rather than towards the horizon and limit their ambition so they would be exempt.
Think about that. A young Australian backs herself, takes the risk, builds something from scratch, and the Government’s answer is to take nearly half of it. I don’t want Sienna to limit her ambition. I want a nation of Siennas with ambition.
And the founders have heard it: forty business owners under forty wrote to the Prime Minister saying they’d been ambushed, not backed.
That is why a Taylor Coalition Government will axe the capital gains tax on start-ups. Because the Siennas of Australia are exactly the people we should be backing, not taxing.
And we will go further. Our Tax Back Guarantee will end the silent theft of bracket creep, which takes more of workers’ wages every single year.
Income tax thresholds should be indexed so tax does not become the silent thief in the night. Tax cuts should not be solely a gift from a vote-buying Treasurer.
The path to growth
But that is only about undoing the damage.
Australia has extraordinary strengths: stable institutions, vast natural resources, an educated population, deep pools of retirement savings and proximity to the fastest-growing region in the world.
Yet we are failing to turn those strengths into rising living standards.
Underlying inflation remains stuck above the Reserve Bank’s target band. Interest rates are being held at their highest level under this Government because home-grown inflation, fuelled by spending, won’t come down.
Rather than an economy in which Australians work less for more, declining productivity means Australians are working more for less and experiencing the biggest decline in living standards in the advanced world.
GDP per person has declined in ten quarters under Labor. It declined again in the most recent quarter. Australia has experienced its longest household recession.
And this Government’s response has been to divide prosperity, not create it.
It is the direct product of an economic model that pours debt petrol on the inflation fire and then reaches for new taxes to pay for it.
The path back is not complicated, but it does require discipline.
First, fiscal responsibility. Get spending growth under control so the Reserve Bank isn’t fighting the Treasury. Every dollar of unnecessary spending is a dollar working against lower interest rates for mortgage holders and businesses across Australia.
Second, tax reform that rewards effort. Lower, simpler, indexed. A system that backs the self-starters rather than treating their savings as the Government’s revenue reserve, because taxing investment is not a growth strategy.
Third, lifting standards of living. Competition reform. Cutting the regulatory burden that has crept into every sector represented in this room. Getting capital markets working so savings flow to their best use. And yes, financial advice reform, because an economy where ordinary people can access good advice is an economy where household capital is deployed more effectively, retirement outcomes are stronger, and the call on the age pension is lower. Advice is productivity policy.
And these are not just ideals. Our plan is on the table.
We will end the Inflation Tax by introducing the Tax Back Guarantee
Because the Albanese government’s economic model is simple: it stokes inflation, taxes the inflation, and spends the inflation, refuelling the very inflation that started the cycle. Inflation pushes wages up, the brackets stay frozen, and the Government collects more from every worker without a single vote in the Parliament. The Tax Back Guarantee breaks that cycle permanently.
We will back small business with a permanent $50,000 instant asset write-off for any business with turnover under $10 million, because small businesses employ half of Australia’s private workforce and deserve certainty to invest—not a threshold that changes with every Budget.
And we will consult on a new Small Business Act, so the self-starters of this country finally have their place in the architecture of our economic laws.
I actually think the Small Business Act is the most important pillar of all. We have an economy built around the structures of the 20th century. As we move towards the challenges of the 21st century, we need a radical rethink of our economic infrastructure.
The growing influence of artificial intelligence will drive a small-business boom alongside salaried work and encourage Australians to step out and chance their hand.
The point of a Small Business Act will be to press reset on the legal, regulatory and tax environment that small businesses face—and to back them in, hard.
And so we are consulting on the detail of a Small Business Act and what should be in it. If you have thoughts, go to standwithsmall.org.
That is the difference. Labor reaches for your savings. We back your effort.
Financial services and consumers’ right to choose
I have believed for a long time, since my days chairing the House Economics Committee, that the financial system exists to serve its customers, not the other way around. Superannuation is the members’ money. Not the funds’ money. Not the unions’ money. Not the Government’s money. The members’ money.
From that principle, everything else follows. Australians have the right to make decisions about their own financial affairs. The right to seek advice. The right to choose their fund, to switch their fund, and to hold their fund accountable.
Right now, the advice gap is a national policy failure. And it is a shared failure.
Millions of Australians who need advice cannot access it at a price they can afford, because a decade of regulation has buried the profession in cost and compliance. Each adviser who has left the industry represents thousands of Australians now making their biggest financial decisions alone or, worse, guided by whoever finds them on social media.
Regulatory costs are not borne by advisers alone; they are passed through to consumers. Combined with rigid fee structures, this has logically pushed advisers towards clients who can pay more, creating a drought of advisers for the Australians who need them most.
And the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry might have generated good headlines, but it left behind regulatory wreckage that has made financial advice less accessible to the many while favouring those less likely to need it.
The Coalition wants a framework that makes quality advice accessible and affordable again, with regulation that is stable, proportionate, and focused on outcomes for consumers rather than paperwork for its own sake.
The obsession with upfront fees has not delivered better outcomes. My baseline is that, where possible, fee structures should be aligned with incentives and success, because I want the best returns for Australians.
Now, on Shield and First Guardian. Let me say plainly: what happened to those investors was a disgrace, and the people responsible should face the full force of the law. Nobody in this room defends misconduct, and nor do I. Where the gatekeepers failed—whether on platforms, in research or in regulation—there must be accountability.
More than 11,000 Australians are estimated to have lost around $1 billion in retirement savings.
Those Australians deserve answers, accountability and an effective response.
The failures must be identified precisely.
Were advisers conflicted? Did trustees fail to undertake adequate due diligence? Did platforms disregard warning signs? Were existing laws insufficient—or insufficiently enforced?
I have real concerns about the Government’s legislative response, expected next month.
Labor, to their credit, know who they govern for. They govern for themselves—for the political arm of the trade union movement, the unions and the industry super funds that finance them—not for the Australian people.
If you doubt that, just look at their recent adoption of the idea that industry super funds will gain access to Centrelink. Despite their boasts, industry funds are not the great performers they claim to be, and they can’t provide support and advice in retirement. So their solution is simply to undermine data privacy and socialise costs in an attempt to trap Australians and their savings.
So it does not surprise me that they see the tragedy suffered by victims of Shield and First Guardian as an opportunity to constrain consumers, trap them in default funds and undermine financial advice.
A system that traps disengaged members in a product is not protection.
Our approach will be guided by clear principles.
Wrongdoers must face consequences. Trustees and platforms must fulfil their obligations. Consumers must receive accurate information. Regulators must act early and be accountable for how they use their powers. We will strengthen enforcement of the laws we have before writing new ones. We will protect consumers’ rights to choose, to switch and to seek advice. And we will never allow a scandal to become the pretext for entrenching incumbents and building walls around members’ money.
Regulators have a vital job, and I want ASIC, APRA and the RBA to be strong, focused and accountable. Strong on enforcement against misconduct. Focused on their core mandates rather than mission creep. And accountable to the Parliament and the public for their performance, because regulators serve the system, and the system serves Australians
Conclusions
There is a lot of static and noise in politics at the moment, but by the next election the choice will be clear.
One path is the one we are on: higher taxes on savings and aspiration, persistent home-grown inflation, falling living standards, and a financial system where the Government decides what you may do with your own money.
The other path is the one the Coalition is building. We will repeal taxes Australians didn’t vote for; impose discipline on spending so interest rates can fall; pursue productivity reform, including making advice affordable again; and maintain an unshakeable commitment to the principle that it is your money, your savings, your future and your right to decide.
The purpose of reform is not a better set of economic statistics.
It is a country in which a young Australian believes effort will be rewarded; a family can build security; a small business can become a large one; and retirement is approached with confidence rather than fear.
And you play a critical role in that. Finance is ultimately an act of hope.
Every investment expresses confidence that tomorrow can be better than today. Every retirement contribution is a promise made by our present selves to our future selves. Every new business financed is a wager on human ingenuity.
Our task is to make Australia worthy of that confidence.
To build an economy that does not fear ambition, punish success or constrain Australians from taking responsibility for their own future.
An economy in which capital serves aspiration, ownership is broadened and prosperity is created by millions of free Australians making plans of their own.
That is the Australia we should finance.
That is the future we should build.
And that is the hope we should own.
Thank you.