The Coalition has called on the Labor government to delay the implementation date of its Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms.
The opposition assistant treasury spokesman Mathias Cormann made the comment at a Liberal party fundraising luncheon in Sydney.
"This whole process has been quite a mess. It has been going for the last three years since the Ripoll inquiry report and it has been chopping and changing as recent as a couple of weeks ago," Cormann said.
"There is still a whole set of issues that are unresolved. There's a lot of uncertainty still. Anybody I talked to in the industry says very clearly that there is just no way that legislation passed by the end of March in relation to FOFA can be seamlessly implemented by the industry come 1 July 2012."
Cormann said he asked Treasury at the recent Senate Estimates whether it was the government's intention to remain committed to the 1 July 2012 date, and they said it was.
"But what is Treasury going to say? It's going to be [Assistant Treasurer] Bill Shorten who's going to have to make the call," Cormann said.
"But given that we are getting so close to the 1 July 2012 deadline, I really do call on Bill Shorten to make an announcement very soon that the implementation date for FOFA will be delayed, or to facilitate a seamless transition."
Cormann said comment from Shorten on the timing of FOFA, particularly in light of a number of amendments to the reforms, would provide the industry with a degree of certainty.
As well as calling for Shorten to act, Cormann also reaffirmed the Coalition's position on FOFA.
"We are in favour of any measure that improves the efficiency and transparency and competitiveness of the financial advice industry," he said.
"We are in favour of anything that will make financial advice more available, more accessible. We're not in favour of making changes for change's sake. We're not in favour of making just change because David Whiteley from the Industry Super Fund Network thinks it's a good idea or because he happens to have the ear of Minister Shorten.
"We will make a judgement on everything before us on the basis of is this going to make this better or is it just going to make this more complex."
