Stephen Jones (left) and Jim Chalmers

After the government went on the offensive, Labor took a more diplomatic stance in presenting its case for the financial services industry.

Appearing via video link at the SMSF Association’s national conference in Adelaide on Thursday, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers playfully avoided falling into the same adversarial political discourse that the Minister for Financial Services used in her speech.

“I know in the teeth of this election campaign, what you really want from me is 15 minutes of partisan spraying on every weakness in government,” Chalmers said. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to do that. Hope you’re not too disappointed.

“What I hope to do instead is take a step back and give you an idea of ​​how I see the economy and what policies I think we need.”

great future

Chalmers said the wider Australian population does not understand that SMSFs are a “big part” of the super sector.

A quarter of pension assets under management are in the SMSF sector, which now has more than 600,000 funds with 1.1 million members according to ATO data.

Wealth Data analysis found that the level of assets per SMSF advisor has more than doubled over the past five years.

“Put simply, the SMSF pie is getting bigger, but the number of slices per advisor has gone down,” said Colin Williams, director of Wealth Data.

“While not all SMSFs are looking for an advisor and not all advisors are interested in advising SMSFs, there is no doubt that existing advisors who want to be part of this opportunity are in a very strong position.”

Shadow Financial Services and Pensions Minister Stephen Jones said he wanted to avoid continued “regulatory jabs”, echoing a similar line he had spoken at the RIAA conference a fortnight earlier.

“The last thing we want the SMSF industry, whether its advisers, accountants or clients, to be the next regulatory blow to come out of Canberra,” Jones said. “We want you to focus on delivering great results for members and for retirees themselves, we want you to have peace of mind when you retire.”

Like Hume the day before, Jones said he wanted to “reduce bureaucracy” in the consulting industry.

“We want to ensure retirees have access to affordable professional advice at the right time and in a way they can afford and understand. Over the past five years, the consulting industry has been in turmoil.

Mismanaged regulatory changes have made it harder for the profession, Jones continued, but also harder for consumers to access the advice they need.

“Australians have never retired with more money. They have never had such difficulty accessing professional financial advice. We want to change this to ensure that all retirees can access the advice they need. need. “

Guarantee for the SG

While Hume boasted of the Morrison government’s commitment not to impose new taxes on superannuation, she did not pledge to protect the Super Guarantee, which both Jones and Chalmers reaffirmed.

“We want to argue that your nest egg will always be safer under Labour,” Jones said. ‘Only the Labor Party has made the unwavering guarantee that the SG levy will continue if we are elected.’

In what was a rare attack during both speeches, Jones criticized the Morrison government for its lack of engagement on the issue.

“We’ve had all sorts of weasel words from the government and the prime minister who promised before the last election to pay the SG levy but then spent the last two years trying to undo that promise.”

Chalmers said it was important not to be complacent about Australia’s super industry and that it had the opportunity for “a big part” of the solution to the country’s economic challenges.

“It’s important to recognize that even with these massive amounts of capital available for investment, we have volatility and uncertainty issues at the moment.”

“That’s why we’ve worked so hard to protect the legislated 12% SG and a framework that supports investments in large-scale infrastructure and clean energy.”

Stability and certainty

If there are two words that both parties want to be associated with, they are “stability” and “certainty”.

Hume said a “re-elected Morrison government means stability and certainty” for the pension system in his speech on Wednesday.

Chalmers said Labor’s priorities for the supers are ‘stability and certainty for the future’, while Jones said Labor understands the industry needs ‘stability and certainty when it comes to regulation of retirement pensions”.