Where will the new minister take the taskforce?
Wednesday, January 26th 2005, 12:05PM 
1 Comment
One of the things we are going to hear a lot about this year is the adviser taskforce.
The thought that I have been pondering for the past few weeks is Helen Clark's cabinet reshuffle late last year that saw Pete Hodgson move into the Minister of Commerce role, now that Margaret Wilson is going to become the speaker.
My interest in this is that the minister is the one who appointed the taskforce. As I mentioned before to try and understand where the taskforce will go you probably have to look at it from this angle.
The man heading the group is a lawyer and he is likely to tackle the project from the viewpoint of "who is his client".
Now he has a "new client" does his brief change at all?
Also interesting is that this is the third Commerce Minister in about a year. Lianne Dalziel seemed genuinely interested in looking at the adviser issue, and all reports are that she was getting some good dialogue going with key stakeholders.
Wilson, much to everyone's surprise, launched the taskforce. Hodgson. What will he do?
Hodgson is considered to be one of the "greener" ministers, and he is also on the left hand side of the political spectrum.
People who have dealt with him in industry reckon that where he doesn't have an ideological preconception he is pretty open to discussion - a bit like Michael Cullen in that regard.
He has a reputation as being the sort of minister who loves asking for report after report.
Clearly one of the risks is that the taskforce maybe just the first in a number of reports. Let's hope not.
Good Returns has tried to interview him on the subject, but we have been told that it will be at least a month until he has got up to speed with the issue.
No surprise really as he is a particularly busy guy being the Minister of Transport, Commerce, Land Information and Statistics as well as being the Associate Minister of Health and the Associate Minister for Industry and Regional Development. To top it all off he is the Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change
To me it suggests the issue isn't top of his agenda. Or he maybe another stop gap commerce minister as there is a rumour he will get the health portfolio after the election.
Time will tell.
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One of the biggest rippoffs is the continuing education everyone is forced to do.
Advisers are having to pay AUD $400 a year for continuing education which is entry level at best.
I'm all for continuing education but when the key provider is slagged off by the Australian industry task force you wonder what people are doing in the name of compliance and how it's providing better outcomes to the client