The Australian Consumers Association (ACA) has fired a broadside against the Minister for Financial Services, Joe Hockey, regarding his appointment of five people to industry complaints bodies.
The ACA says Hockey’s appointment of key people to the Insurance Enquries and Complaints (IEC) body and the Financial Industry Complaints Scheme (FICS) are of a political nature, and has asked the Australian and Securities Investments Commission to suspend the operations of both bodies. The ACA has also called for an independent inquiry into Hockey’s appointments.
Two of the appointments were former Liberal MP Bob Baldwin, who will be standing at this year’s election for the NSW seat of Paterson, and former adviser to Communications Minister Richard Alston, Stephen Duffield, who was appointed as the consumer representative to the Financial Services Complaints Service.
ACA finance policy officer Louise Petschler says: “The whole system of financial services self-regulation in Australia is now being questioned.”
Joining the outcry against the appointments is Financial Services Consumer Policy Centre director Chris Connolly who says Hockey’s appointments do not have expertise in consumer affairs.
“We are concerned that at a time of great crisis in the regulation of financial services, in the wake of the HIH collapse, two consumer complaints schemes are not independent,” Connolly says.
Hockey, meanwhile, hit back at his critics this morning on ABC radio. Hockey said that within the ASIC charter, policy statement 139 states that the minister for consumer affairs is able to appoint at their own discretion a representative of themselves to sit on a particular industry board or panel. He argues that since he is that minister, then he is following these policy rulings.
“These appointments are in fact representatives of me on these panels and these are industry-run panels,” he said.
He also returned fire on Chris Connolly who he said had previously written the Labor Party’s banking policy. Hockey said: “He did such a dreadful job on that, I wouldn’t let him near insurance.”
He also said he has appointed 40 consumer representatives, including a number from the ACA, to various industry bodies and disputed the Association’s claim it is not represented.
“I look for people who are unbiased in their decisions and are not part of the Labor Party clique and some of the consumer union groups.”
