The Australian Government is Justified in Establishing a Single Disciplinary Body

Abstract

Published empirical research (McInnes 2020) proves licensing financial advisers through multiple profit-driven Australian Financial Services licensees contributes to conflicts of interest by association. Government’s response is to regulate advisers by adopting a single disciplinary body (Frydenberg & Hume 2019) to professionalise advisers like established professions. This paper supports Government’s move to implement this body (Taylor 2020c; Maddock 2020), albeit delayed by COVID-19 (Taylor 2020a), by using the evidence published in a Routledge book (McInnes 2020). It aims to motivate advisers to work with policymakers to reshape financial advice into a true, accredited profession to address the problem of conflicted association, to make advice accessible (Marsh & Phillips 2019) and conflict free, while also dismantling costly compliance legislation (Smith & Sharpe 2020).