The current leadership struggles engulfing the Labor Party could mean Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) issues are superseded, according to the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) political strategist Kerry Chikarovski.
Chikarovski told at an AFA partners’ briefing yesterday it was too hard to predict what would happen within the next week or so, and it would be interesting to see if Prime Minister Julia Gillard had the courage to call the spill.
But either way the next 10 days or so would be an extremely difficult period for the party, she said.
Chikarovski added that Labor had deeper issues than just two egos fighting for the leadership, but said it was not in the best interests of the country to have a Government that was too focused on itself to run the country.
"This means that FOFA won’t be the number one priority when [Labor goes] back to parliament next week," she said. Financial Services Minister Bill Shorten had already said that FOFA would not be discussed further until the Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) had reported, she added.
Commenting on the recent PJC inquiry into FOFA, Chikarovski said there had seemed to be a lack of understanding among some Labor members regarding some implementation issues and FOFA effects, but hopefully they were clearer on those issues after the hearing.
"You can be reasonably confident that there’s division within the committee as to what that report’s going to say, so there will be two reports, one of which will be the minority report from the Coalition," she said.
Chikarovski said the PJC would probably still not change Shorten’s thinking around FOFA, although he had finally indicated there might be some flexibility around the implementation date.
"It clearly wasn’t going to happen on 1 July this year, having not gone through the lower house, let alone the upper house," she said.
