Compromise and strategy key in adviser advocacy for government reform

According to George John, senior manager of government relations and policy at the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA), advisers as a whole need to prioritise certain goals over others in order to ensure government action.

Speaking at the FAAA congress in November, Mr John said “it is all about bandwidth”.

“We have his [Minister for Financial Services] attention and the government’s attention for a limited amount of time and so what we need to be able to do is to prioritise our goals and objectives to make sure that we’re achieving the big things, we’re achieving those things that are achievable,” Mr John said.

“We know that we’re never going to be able to brief the government, we’re never going to be able to lobby every single regulator to achieve absolutely everything we want and part of what that means is that there has to be a compromise of what some of those goals look like”.

Therefore, the FAAA is conducting online consultations with its members to juxtapose ideas, considering not only those that may seem inherently aligned but also those that the government might perceive as related.

These consultations are a key part of its efforts to renew the focus of its policy platform, a task the FAAA decided to tackle following the merger of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) and Association of Financial Advisers (AFA).

The first part of the policy platform creation process included an initial online survey that yielded 39 initiatives that are now guiding the further policy renewal conversations.

“What we are trying to do through this process is get as much information from as many people in as many different forms as possible,” Mr John said.

“We really want this to be a members-led solution to what the future of the profession looks like.”

Having worked in politics for the best part of the last two decades, Mr John said: “One of the things that I’ve noticed when talking to government is that if you approach a conversation with similar language, with similar vocabulary, they immediately turn off.”

The FAAA’s new policy platform will be an active document that will guide the body’s advocacy work through to 2030.

According to Mr John, the FAAA aims to see the policy platform become a “binding document”, as well as a guide for what the profession will look like in the future.

"What’s going to guide this document and what’s going to guide the way we develop the objectives are questions around adviser numbers, questions around who provides the advice, questions around what does an adviser look like in 2030, and the fourth question is a genuine question about the FAAA capacity to advocate for change," he explained.

The FPA and AFA officially merged in April 2023, after members of the bodies voted in favour of the merger at extraordinary general meetings held in Sydney in February.