Labor pains: planners wary of agenda

While most financial planners do not expect a Labor Government to do more than ‘tinker at the edges’ with financial services legislation, they are nonetheless nervous about a change of Government on November 24.

That is the bottom line of an online reader survey conducted by Money Management in late October and early November that asked a range of questions aimed at teasing out the views of planners in the run up to the Federal Election.

Asked how dramatically they believed a change of Government would alter the financial services environment in Australia, nearly 75 per cent of respondents indicated that there would only be some tinkering at the edges, or no change at all.

However, notwithstanding this belief, the survey revealed that many respondents remained deeply suspicious of the Australian Labor Party and its policy intentions, with around 38 per cent believing that policy changes implemented by a Labor Government would not be positive.

Importantly, however, most respondents (58 per cent) did not have a view one way or the other.

What was clear from the survey, however, was that the perceived linkage between the Australian Labor Party and industry funds represented a distinct negative for the Federal Opposition.

More than 60 per cent of survey respondents said they believed a Labor Government would be unduly influenced by industry funds.

On the always-controversial question of planner remuneration, the survey respondents were fairly evenly divided on whether a Labor Government would intervene in the way in which planners were paid, with 52 per cent saying they believed there would be some sort of intervention.

More than 80 per cent of respondents said they would not approve of such intervention.