Advisers rank Kelly O’Dwyer as worst financial services minister

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

13 January 2023

A poll of financial advisers has determined that they regard Kelly O’Dwyer as having been the worst-performing minister to have overseen the Financial Services portfolio.

O’Dwyer, who resigned from the Parliament ahead of the 2019 Federal Election, emerged as the least-regarded minister, ahead of Senator Jane Hume and former Treasurer and Financial Services minister, Josh Frydenberg.

O’Dwyer, Hume and Frydenberg are all members of the Liberal/National Party. What distinguishes the three former ministers is that their time in the portfolio coincided with some of the most controversial impacts on financial advice – the implementation of the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA), the Life Insurance Framework (LIF), the Royal Commission and the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) regime.

Financial Newswire conducted the poll in the wake of the Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals declaring it felt vindicated in its decision to take the highly politically partisan approach of campaigning against the Liberal/National Party at last year’s Federal Election.

The best regarded minister to emerge from the poll was the current Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, although a number of respondents separately commented that he had spent less than a year in the role with many crucial financial planning policy decisions still pending.

The second ranked former minister was the Liberal Party’s Arthur Sinodinos, followed by Mathias Cormann and then the Labor Party’s Nick Sherry and Bill Shorten.

Respondents to the poll were asked to rank ministers from one down to eight, with eight being the lowest possible ranking. The result was as follows:

1. Stephen Jones, ALP
2. Arthur Sinodinos, LNP
3. Mathias Cormann, LNP
4. Nick Sherry, ALP
5. Bill Shorten, ALP
6. Josh Frydenberg, LNP
7. Jane Hume, LNP
8. Kelly O’Dwyer, LNP

Interestingly, Kelly O’Dwyer was similarly harshly judged in a poll of financial advisers conducted in 2020.