Advisers as ‘kingmaker’: AIOFP pushes marginal seat strategy

In an email to members, Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (AIOFP) executive director Peter Johnston has reiterated the AIOFP’s longstanding call for advisers to educate clients on the issues impacting the sector to put pressure on the government at the upcoming federal election.

Johnston pointed to the recent groundswell from the Muslim Vote political movement, which was established following community anger at Labor’s handling of the war in Gaza, as an “encouraging scenario” for the advice community.

Coverage of the movement has quietened over the last month, but the strategy of targeting marginal Labor Party seats with large Muslim populations, as well as those of senior ALP politicians in what are generally considered safe seats, is similar to what the AIOFP is advocating.

“It’s about the ALP having to please pressure groups demanding attention before the election or suffer the consequences,” Johnston said.

He added that the 18 marginal and 21 “fairly marginal” ALP-held seats are the government’s Achilles’ heel.

“At the last election, the ALP won 77 seats of the 151, 58 to the Coalition and 16 to the crossbenchers. It looks mathematically challenging for the Coalition to form government, but not impossible,” Johnston said.

Doing some back-of-the envelope maths, he argued the 18 seats with a margin between 0.5 and 6 per cent would be decided by just 500 to 6,000 votes.

“We only need a handful of advisers and their clients in some seats to be the kingmaker,” he added.

“Consent forms, risk commissions and the Dixon fiasco are our ‘middle east’ issues that the ALP must resolve before the next election or face stiff opposition from the advice community and their clients.

“Considering we have around 14,000 advisers and the average is 134 clients each, we have 1,876,000 potential votes across the nation.”

Importantly, Johnston said, advisers need to take note of the mantra that “our vote is for lease, not sale”.

“In other words, give us what we want now and on an ongoing basis. This is precisely why we are not exactly friends with the ALP at the moment,” he told members.

“Minister Jones started off well with the education pathways but has not acted in our members’ and their clients’ best interests over the past two years – and we have let him know that in very direct terms.”

According to Johnston, the AIOFP is currently awaiting “legal sign-off” for a political donation strategy.

“We need to be ‘in their face’ to get attention and what we want – remember, shrinking violets and fence-sitters normally get nowhere,” he said.

In a subsequent email, Johnston added: “We have the chance to make a big intimidating statement to Canberra that unless they leave us alone in future and fix some current issues this side of the election – they will suffer at the ballot box.

“To set the scene, the AIOFP will be writing directly to each marginal seat politician explaining the facts of life.”

The AIOFP has been signalling its intention to rally advisers politically for the last 12 months, while also spruiking the impact advisers played in former treasurer Josh Frydenberg losing his seat of Kooyong in the 2022 election.

“It should be clearly understood that our 2022 Kooyong marginal seat strategy and outcome has unsettled Canberra, what should be noted, however, is it can be used in any seat and against any political party at the time of our choosing,” Johnston said last year.

“This is what disturbs all sides of politics, it is therefore critical to continue with subtle posturing to remind and intimidate all stakeholders of our power.”