The financial services industry has lost two of its most experienced portfolio players in the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s new Cabinet with former Financial Services Minister, Chris Bowen and Assistant Treasurer, Nick Sherry being moved to new responsibilities.
In their place will be a single minister with no previous experience in the portfolio, former national union official, Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services and Australian Labor Party factional heavyweight, Bill Shorten.
Shorten, who was on Saturday named as both Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, will sit outside of the Cabinet but will bring together key facets of the financial services portfolio, which had previously been divided between Sherry and Bowen.
For his part, Bowen has been rewarded both for his handling of the financial services portfolio and acting as party spokesman during the federal election campaign by being brought within the Cabinet and handed responsibility for immigration.
Shorten, as a former federal secretary of the Australian Workers Union, will have experience in the running of a superannuation trustee board but would otherwise have had limited contact with the broader financial services industry.
He will now be tasked with picking up the threads of the Government’s Future of Financial Advice reforms but it remains to be seen how high on the Government’s legislative agenda those initiatives will be and whether sufficient support exists among the independents and in the Senate to implement those changes.
Former Assistant Treasurer, Nick Sherry, is regarded as arguably the most experienced member of the Government with respect to financial services.
