Sensible government appointments

Saturday, October 22nd 2005, 1:31AM

The cabinet Helen Clark has appointed for the new government is one which the financial services industry could live with quite comfortably.

One of the main appointments I have been interested in is the commerce minister role, as this person will drive the adviser reform process. (Reform mightn't be the correct word. I always think of reform as fixing something which is broken and advisers aren't broken).
We always knew that Pete Hodgson was only a caretaker in this role, and we had (correctly) speculated that he would move into health after the election.

Dalziel started the process of looking at the advisory industry, and her immediate successor Margaret Wilson was the one that lit the fuse by setting up the task force.

The talk we hear is that the whole adviser reform process is quite high on the agenda and money has been put aside to move it forward.

The FPIA has signaled that it is preparing to move on becoming an Approved Professional Body. It's good to see they want to go down this line. The challenge is that no-one knows what an APB will look like or what it will be required to do.

The other appointment of note is in the revenue area. This time around it goes to someone who has been in the role before and has taken an interest in superannuation.

If you haven't heard the new minister is Peter Dunne.

National's John Key tried to have a crack at him this week challenging him to dump the proposed plans for tax changes to international investments.

Key labeled them "crazy" and nothing more than a "tax grab". "The new Revenue Minister should order a review of the capital gains tax as his top priority," he postulated.

Dunne, to his credit, said he hadn't got his feet under the desk yet so wasn't ordering anything. Good old Mr Sensible.

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