Speaking on the floor of the Senate on Friday, Senator Cormann decried the government’s earlier attempt to “ram” amendments to the Tax Agent Services Act (TASA) through the House of Representatives without holding an inquiry.
“[It was] only because the Independents agreed with our view that it was completely inappropriate [and] completely outrageous [that] we were able to enforce the inquiry,” he said.
A subsequent inquiry by the parliamentary joint committee only recommended slight changes to the legislation, but a dissenting Coalition report called for the Bill to be deferred until June 2014.
Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury then presented an amended Bill to the House of Representatives which acceded to Coalition and financial planning industry calls to extend the implementation date of the regime for one year.
Speaking before the legislation was passed through the Senate on Friday, Mr Cormann claimed the government had “completely rolled over” on the issue and adopted the Coalition’s changes.
“We said it was unreasonable to impose a massive change and regulatory arrangements on financial advisers by putting them into the TASA regime from 1 July 2013,” he said.
“The government has adopted holus-bolus all of our recommendations. But … this Bill would never have been improved if the government had gotten its way in ramming things through the House of Representatives the way they’re ramming things through the Senate.”
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon raised another aspect of the Bill, before labelling the government’s measures to stifle debate in the Senate as “disgusting”: “What has happened here this week is a disgrace,” he said. “It is absolutely appalling that the house of review has been reduced to a rubber stamp.”
He compared the measures taken by the current government to the Howard government’s “guillotining” of debate in 2005.
“The Howard government are amateurs compared to what we’ve seen this week. This is disgusting,” he said.
