MEDIA RELEASE
22 June 2026
Financial planning professionals from across the Sunshine Coast have told Federal Member for Fisher Andrew Wallace MP that Labor’s 2026 Budget is devastating retirees, destroying the financial advice industry and pushing ordinary Australians out of reach of the professional guidance they desperately need.
Mr Wallace recently convened a roundtable with local financial planners to discuss the impacts of Labor’s Budget measures on retirees, investors and the financial advice sector.
With more than 8,000 Australians already signing his petition opposing Labor’s health tax on seniors, Mr Wallace said financial advisers reported that even before the Budget, approximately 75 to 80 per cent of their clients aged 65 and over were raising serious concerns about the cost of private health insurance.
Labor’s decision to strip rebates from this cohort has compounded an already acute problem, with typical gold-tier couples now facing around $1,600 in additional annual costs. Many are considering dropping their cover altogether and flooding the public health system.
“The damage goes beyond the hip pocket,” Mr Wallace said.
“Older Australians feel the rules have been changed on them after a lifetime of doing the right thing.”
“They were told in their twenties that taking out private health insurance before 30 would deliver lifetime concessions.”
“Labor has stripped that promise away from people in their 60s and 70s who have no capacity to adjust their retirement plans. That is a breach of trust.”
Mr Wallace said Labor’s proposed changes, including indexation of cost bases for gains but not losses and altered ordering rules for capital losses, would strike directly at retirement plans in ways designed to maximise government revenue at the expense of retirees and investors.
Financial planning professionals at the roundtable described Labor’s tax changes as the greatest redistribution of wealth in Australian history, transferring money from the savings of ordinary Australians directly into government coffers.
Rather than simplifying the system, advisers warned the changes are expected to drive investors into company structures to escape poorly designed rules and place far heavier compliance demands on everyday Australians.
“This is the precise opposite of the fairer system Labor proposed,” Mr Wallace said.
The sentiment among clients was put simply and powerfully by one financial planner, who relayed the words of their own client on hearing about Labor’s Budget measures:
“I left communist China to get away from this.”
Mr Wallace said the financial advice profession was already under immense pressure.
“Within less than a decade, the adviser workforce has been cut by about half, creating a growing advice gap right when retirees and families need help the most,” Mr Wallace said.
“Those who remain face crushing fixed overheads including professional indemnity insurance, Compensation Scheme of Last Resort levies, licensee fees and audit requirements, all of which must be recovered from a shrinking client base.”
“Middle Australia has been priced out of professional financial advice at precisely the moment it needs that advice most.”
Mr Wallace said financial planners also raised concerns about the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort.
“Compliant advisers are being levied through the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort to pay for collapses and failures they had no part in, while dodgy product issuers seem to walk away Scott free,” Mr Wallace said.
“Labor must rebalance the scheme so that wrongdoers bear the cost of their own misconduct.”
Mr Wallace said he would take the concerns raised by Fisher’s financial planning community directly to Canberra.
“I will use the evidence gathered directly from Fisher’s financial planning community in parliamentary speeches and party-room contributions.” Mr Wallace said.
[ENDS]
Media Contact: Brendan West – 0402 556 646 – Brendan.west@aph.gov.au
