Stuart Robert announces resignation from federal politics

Stuart Robert announced his unexpected decision to leave parliament over the weekend, noting that he would be retiring from his position as Member for Fadden within weeks. 

“Serving my community and the country has been the highest of honours. But it is now time to focus on my family,” Mr Robert said.

Mr Robert joined ifa on a podcast last week where he was openly critical of Financial Services Minister, Stephen Jones, and his handling of the financial advice industry. 

Among other things, Mr Robert denounced the government’s approach to the Quality of Advice Review (QAR), referring to their “consulting upon the consultation” as a “farce”, and raised doubts about the competency of Mr Jones.

“It’s like an episode of Monty Python. You’ve got a minister presiding now over the Ministry of Silly Walks. This Michelle Levy review is an outstanding piece of work. The Coalition believes it should be implemented in full and implemented now,” the shadow minister said.

“It needs to be implemented. It’s an outstanding body of work. It has broad support from the entire industry. The entire industry. The only area where there’s not support is from consumer advocates, but the rest of the industry is speaking as one. It’s a no-brainer. The minister has got to move out of the Ministry of Silly Walks office he’s in and get on with implementing a reform that’s desperately needed,” he continued. 

Asked about the reputation his party has among advisers, Mr Robert said his government “had no choice” but to act and referred to FASEA as an act of desperation.

“One of the challenges that came out, of course Future Advice [FOFA reforms], the Ripoll report that I was part of, and the implementation changes there, is that the industry couldn’t bring itself together," Mr Robert said. 

“It couldn’t bring itself to have a set of education standards. It couldn’t bring itself to have a set of compliance standards. And the industry was asked time and time again. And as we’ve said before, it was very fractured. In desperation then government stepped in with FASEA. Now I’ve been the first to admit that I thought FASEA was quite a failure, but it was desperation that saw government do that when industry should have done that itself,” the shadow minister added.

“It’s all well and good for industry to throw rocks at government. But when industry does not self-regulate itself, it gives government no choice. And that’s the key thing. If government’s got no choice, it has to act.”

Mr Robert’s political career has not been devoid of controversy. Most recently, he was involved in the Royal Commission investigating the mishandled Centrelink compliance scheme, commonly referred to as Robodebt, where he admitted that while in cabinet, he had made false statements about the way the debt was calculated. 

In his resignation announcement over the weekend, Mr Robert admitted that his “time in parliament has not been the smoothest ride”. Adding that while he hoped for a “a kinder, gentler parliament”, as promised by Labor, he feared that “division has well and truly entrenched itself in the current parliament”. 

“A kinder, gentler parliament it is not.”