Neglect in the budget makes federal election outcome ‘crucial’' for advisers

The 2025–26 federal budget release last week has once again left financial advisers disappointed, with not even a single mention in the entire document. Though the budget, as a whole, was notably skint, coming in at just 93 pages, compared with 200 last year.

Financial Advice Association Australian (FAAA) general manager of policy, advocacy and standards Phil Anderson suggested that, because this is a pre-election budget, some leeway may have been left in the budget to fund any election promises, which could be part of the reason behind such a lacklustre budget.

“The feedback from our team is that this is not a normal budget. This is one that’s been put together quickly and you can tell it’s been done in the context of the election overhang and the fact that there’ll be other commitments that are made as part of the election,” Anderson said on The ifa Show.

However, the most common speculation is that the budget was never actually supposed to happen as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had initially planned on calling the federal election in early March but was forced to pivot due to the presence of Tropical Cyclone Alfred off the Queensland coast.

Though the election was officially called on Friday, the stalling of the PM’s announcement meant that Labor was forced to pull together a full federal budget they had not really planned for.

Anderson said the substance of the budget supports this suspicion, particularly as the budget document came out to just 93 pages, compared with 200 last year.

“This might have been pulled together pretty quickly and they would have had to have left things that were already in the numbers and just played with other parts of the whole model. So, I don’t know that we should read too much into this,” he said.

Furthermore, as the Division 296 $3 million superannuation tax also didn’t merit a mention, Anderson said the results of the federal election will be “critical” as a change in government could mean this particular bill is “less likely to emerge again”.

“There’s no suggestion that it’ll be any easier for the government to get that particular piece of legislation, the Better Targeted Super Concessions legislation through the Senate. So, we, like other parties who have strong views on this, will just continue to advocate,” he said.

“Ultimately, it will be in the hands of the government and the Parliament to decide what happens with this. It’s important to note that this particular bill, which has gone through the House, will basically be annulled and it will need to go back through the House if it is to proceed in the new Parliament.”

Commenting ahead of the opposition’s post-budget speech, Anderson said Liberal leader Peter Dutton appeared to be “holding his cards pretty close to his chest”, opting not to share too much about what he has planned for the election.

“They may take more of a strategy of challenging the government and what the government has said. So, I’m not really in a position to predict what will happen tomorrow, but I don’t think we should expect that it’s going to include everything that they have in mind as we go into the election,” he said.

FAAA’s expectations for the next minister

With so much riding on the federal election, particularly for the financial advice sector, Anderson said there are a number of issues the next financial services minister, among other key policymakers, will need to address.

“What we think the new minister must deliver on is to fix DBFO tranche two. You know, we’re probably going to be close to two and a half years since the Levy report was handed down when the election actually happens but we’ve got very little,” he said.

“The fee consent remains; it’s a mess as well. Maybe not a hot mess, but we certainly haven’t achieved what we want out of the reforms to the fee consent forms.

“The CSLR, I mean, we have had the referral to a Senate inquiry, which hasn’t made material progress. We’ve had the government refer the CSLR to do a Treasury review. We want action. We need those problems to be fixed. We’re facing $193 million of cost over the 25–26 and 26–27 years, which is just simply unsustainable. So, we want action on that.”

On top of this, Anderson said there are a range of other issues in need of addressing that Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones had said he would handle but has failed to do so over the last three years.

“The flexibility in the education standard, fixing the code of ethics, which was something that Stephen Jones promised back in August of 2022. He said once he’d fixed DBFO, he would come back and fix the code of ethics, which needs to happen,” he said.

“Access to the ATO portal. We’ve been waiting for so long to get that. That’s something that we would want a new minister to deliver. So, the new minister will have no shortage of things that the financial advice profession will be asking them to do, and that’s assuming that we get what we want out of DBFO tranche two.

“It may well be that we need to be thinking about tranche three and a range of other measures to achieve broader objectives to improve the efficiency of delivering financial advice.”

To hear more from Phil Anderson, tune in here.