Financial planners have done nothing wrong by encouraging clients to invest more in superannuation as a result of the former Liberal Government’s ‘better super’ changes, according to the Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, Senator Nick Sherry.
Sherry used an address to the Financial Planning Association national conference on the Gold Coast to criticise the former Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, for suggesting planners may have acted inappropriately with respect to the extra super contributions.
“É Costello has been very vocal on this issue,” he said. “Unfortunately, and I think unfairly, financial planners were directly in is his firing line.”
Sherry claimed Costello’s comments had “basically sought to place blame on planners for advising clients to direct voluntary payments into super at a time when the then Government was directly encouraging exactly that outcome through legislative change and a very expensive advertising campaign”.
“As I said at the time, the financial planning community is not to blame. You responded to a regulatory change, pushed along by incentives and advertising. You acted within the law. I don’t think it fair or accurate to look back and to now try and apportion blame,” the minister said.
