Wong Pansy: Financial Service Providers (Pre-Implementation Adjustments) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wong Pansy: Financial Service Providers (Pre-Implementation Adjustments) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 22 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:11979. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PANSY WONG (Minister for Ethnic Affairs) 
: 
 I thank members for their contributions and questions. I have a collection of four questions; I will try to address them slowly. I think they are good questions and we welcome them and will do our homework to address them. 
I will tackle the first one. I understand it was raised by the Hon Lianne Dalziel and is about the concern that retailers who engage in credit sales may be caught by the initial financial services legislation. She asked whether we have made an amendment to make sure they are not caught under the Financial Advisers Act. The amendment is on Supplementary Order Paper 146 under “Clause 7: new section 13”. I hope that addresses the member’s good question. People whose principal activity is not financial services will not get caught under the new legislation. That is the first question. 
The second question is whether organisations like Telecom TaxiCharge and the like have to be registered as financial advisers. At this stage the Minister of Commerce would consider that and make a decision. There are two parts to the exemption: one is whether they need to register and the second is whether they need to be involved in the dispute resolution scheme. The Minister would make a policy announcement on whether they can be exempt from both of those whether they can be exempt from one or whatever. We undertake to address that issue. We really want to reflect on the matter and to make sure it is right. I understand that if we do need to do anything it can be done by regulation so it would not unduly hold up anything. I acknowledge the effort on both sides of the Chamber. We aim to make the legislation work. Nobody wants to hold up anything unnecessarily but we also want to get it right. 
I understand the third issue that was raised with me is the ability of advisers to opt into the scheme. The Minister has undertaken to consult with stakeholders because we want to make sure that if we go ahead with the provision which will be in the form of regulation we get it right. We are looking at a time frame of around 2 months. We want to do consultation; we want to make the regulation right. So that is the third issue. 
The fourth issue is what Charles Chauvel just raised in terms of new section 49D in clause 38B: why have we crossed out the words “or a complainant”? Section 49D is not aimed to be an appeal section. The purpose of that particular clause is to enforce decisions on people who have a case taken against them—it is an enforcement section. The reason that we crossed out “or a complainant” is that we believe that enforcement action is more effective if it is not taken by the complainant. So it is not dealing with the appeal right; it is more about enforcing a decision that is made under dispute resolution. We thought the power would be better exercised by people who operate the scheme rather than by the complainant. So there is absolutely no intention to create mischief. I emphasise that that section aims to enforce the dispute resolution result and we think it is better that the person who runs the scheme enforce it. It is not conferring an appeal right.