A Government backbencher has complained that it will be impossible to determine why the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) changed Standard 3 of its code of ethics in the absence of all relevant submissions being made public on the authority’s website.
Queensland Liberal Senator, Amanda Stoker used Senate Estimates to ask FASEA chief executive, Stephen Glenfield why the authority had not released any of the submissions it had received through the consultation exercises around the code of ethics.
In doing so, she pointed to the fact that she had first raised the issue a year earlier in October, last year.
“You took that question on notice, and when you responded, you advised that you had listed the names of the submitters on your website and noted that ‘FASEA is reviewing its ability to create links to lodged submissions or otherwise make them publicly available’,” she said.
“I see that you now have that functionality, and you have released the submissions that you received in response to the ‘Financial Planners and Advisers Code of Ethics 2019 Guidance’ document that you issued in October 2019, however you have still not released the submissions that you received on the consultation exercise that led to the finalisation of the code of ethics.”
“It is now a year later, and these submissions have still not been released and we are all still none the wiser as to why you made that significant change to Standard 3 prior to it being issued in February last year. Why haven’t these submissions on the code of ethics been released?”
Glenfield responded that the submissions were available on the FASEA website and repeated that assertion when challenged on the issue by Stoker.
Stoker then asked Glenfield to provide her with the links to the submission.
A search of the FASEA website late on Wednesday could not locate any submissions other than those referenced by Stoker.
