Legally challenge FOFA, says planning principal
Financial planners need to legally challenge the most objectionable elements of the Government’s Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) changes, according to regional Victorian financial planning principal Brian Handley.
Handley has told Money Management that financial planners need to challenge the legal basis and constitutionality of elements of FOFA (particularly the opt-in requirements) in a similar fashion to the manner in which the tobacco industry has mounted a challenge to the Commonwealth over labelling.
“There will be a high price to pay if we do not mount such a challenge,” he said.
Handley said he believed the industry needed to signal its clear intention to mount such a challenge before the FOFA legislation was tabled in the Parliament, because it was important that Parliamentarians understood the issues and the implications.
He said such legal advice needed to be comprehensive and to examine the implications of everything that was being proposed by the Government.
“If we are going to go down [on FOFA], we might as well go down fighting,” Handley said.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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