Senate dumps Josh Frydenberg’s superannuation changes in further government setback
Josh Frydenberg’s attempts to cripple the proxy advisers who advise superannuation funds on how to vote on issues including executive pay have been described as a “cluster fiasco” after the Senate killed off the regulations introduced by the treasurer.
The regulations were introduced in December and had been in force for just three days when the Senate disallowed them on Thursday.
The move was another blow for the government on a messy day in parliament where it also shelved its contentious religious discrimination bills.
… Dean Paatsch, a co-founder of proxy adviser business Ownership Matters who has embarrassed the Morrison government through his work on jobkeeper payments, said the entire process had been a “cluster fiasco”.
“It was profoundly disappointing that the government indulged crony capitalists and the major business lobbies at the expense of respect for property rights, the freedom to contract and the right to confidential advice”.
Patrick said the regulations were “bad law, crafted to please Josh Frydenberg’s big business mates and political donors, and the senate rightly rejected it”.
“This has got to be a world record start-up then shut down of a regulatory regime. It lasted three days. It was one big thought bubble from the treasurer that just wasted taxpayers’ money and the parliament’s time.”
Leigh told parliament the defeat of the regulations, which included fines of up to $11m and jail terms of up to five years for operating without a licence, was “a victory for shareholder capitalism, for transparency, and for small business in Australia”.
He told parliament it was also a “defeat for Arnold Bloch Leibler, the firm that pays the treasurer’s pro bono legal bills and has campaigned against the transparency that proxy advisers bring.”
Josh Frydenberg sustains full-body gravel rash
Josh Frydenberg’s reprehensible regulatory ambush of the proxy advice sector was disallowed by the Australian Senate on Thursday morning, with independent Rex Patrick leading the entire crossbench to quash the new rules.
This vindictive regime, which the Treasurer snuck into the Corporations Act in the week before Christmas, was in operation for just three days. The dolt from Kooyong even established a whole new capability inside the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to police four companies that employ 30 people and generate $5 million of revenue, and it has been decommissioned after 72 hours on the beat. For bureaucratic superfluity, it is certainly Frydenberg’s personal best, but it may even be a world record.
Embarrassing defeat: Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Alex Ellinghausen
The contempt he showed for his own parliamentary colleagues by using deferred powers to spirit these regulations into law is genuinely shocking. Liberal MPs can now plainly see there are no lengths Frydenberg won’t go to, no goose chase too outlandish, for his personal lawyers at Arnold Bloch Leiblerand their clients way out on the wacko fringes of the Australian sharemarket.
The Treasurer diverted the entire government down sideshow alley to pursue the revenge fantasy of a law firm. This manifestly takes precedence over Liberal ideals in his hierarchy of actions.
You could say the same for the so-called free marketeers of the Senate who voted to keep the regulations, including the tinder-dry Dean Smith, James Paterson of the Institute of Public Affairs or the intergalactically dim Andrew Bragg. How do they call themselves defenders of small business or liberal markets
Indeed, only a Treasurer who had pissed away $20 billion of public money in unintended fiscal stimulus via JobKeeper could waste this much time and energy on something as small as kneecapping four little proxy houses that irritate his mates.
Frydenberg’s humiliation is total. His complete lack of political judgment has been exposed for all to see. He would be profoundly embarrassed, were he capable of embarrassment.
There he was whispering down the phone to Pauline Hanson in the dying minutes, begging for her vote (that’s nothing – he was in Darwin lobbying crossbench senator Sam McMahonlast week). When it was clear he’d lost One Nation, he had Senate leader Simon Birmingham attempt a procedural motion to delay the disallowance vote then, when that failed, a motion to allow debate so the Coalition could filibuster to the end of the sitting week. Over this!
Why did this matter so much? Because it was about so little. Because Frydenberg has no other agenda. There is no other economic legislation in the Parliament!
The Morrison government really is stupendous. The decks don’t need to be cleared when they enter been deserted for three years.
Even in defeat, the Treasurer was embarrassing himself. His was the press release of a student councillor, labouring the same old tropes about big super and the Greens, like Alec Baldwin at the end of Team America spluttering “ah, it’s global warming and, er, ah, corporate America” before Kim Jong-il put him out of his misery.
Frydenberg can memorise artless debating points but his advocacy disintegrates when it collides with any policy complexity or requires any verifiable detail. Because he is lighter than helium.
Undergraduate antics might work on breakfast television or FM radio, where Frydenberg is most at home, but they failed him in the Senate. Even the loopiest corner of the crossbench could see right through him.
