Senator DASTYARI (New South Wales) (15:51): I rise to take note of answers given by Senator Cormann during question time today—and what a day it has been! With apologies to President Obama, today we have seen the government in the Senate acting with the audacity of hope. Over the past few hours we have witnessed the government's audacity in trying to ram through the repeal of the carbon tax legislation without debate. During question time, we finally got to hear the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann—the still acting Assistant Treasurer—admit that the government has audaciously introduced changes to Labor's Future of Financial Advice reforms to remove basic consumer protections, in the dead of the night, at the eleventh hour, in an audacious attempt to subvert the parliamentary process and avoid the scrutiny of the Senate. There has been an attempt to ram through changes making it easier for the likes of Storm, Trio, Timbercorp, Great Southern and—as we heard again just 10 days ago—the Commonwealth Bank's shonky financial planning arm to rip off ordinary Australians. The government has the audacity to hope that they are going to get away with it. On 30 June, hours before their own 1 July deadline, they promised the big banks, AMP and a handful of dodgy financial planners that give the good financial planners a bad name, that they would keep their promise to them. While they were prepared to break promises to working Australians—promises about the ABC, promises about Medicare and promises about SBS—they insisted that they needed to keep a promise to the big banks and to a handful of dodgy financial planners and audaciously introduced these changes by regulation, without the confidence or the guts to bring proper legislation into this place. In today's Financial Review,Phil Coorey asked Mr Clive Palmer, the member for Fairfax, what he thought about Mr Cormann's audacious act. For the benefit of those opposite, I will quote the response the member for Fairfax gave Mr Coorey. The member for Fairfax said: They can stick it up their arse—and you can quote me on that. How can you have advisers not acting in people's best interests? The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Simply quoting unparliamentary language does not make it parliamentary, and I would ask you to withdraw. I would also ask you to be mindful of the standing orders. Senator DASTYARI: I withdraw. I was of the opinion that I was quoting a member of the other place. But I could not agree more with the sentiment that was expressed earlier today by Mr Palmer, the member for Fairfax. I think he captured the sentiments of people who had been fleeced, who had been mugged and who had been ripped off before the FoFA changes were introduced. Senator Cormann's audacious act in the dead of night will take Australia back to the bad old days. He has removed the best interests duty by removing the list of the steps a planner must take to legally meet the best interests duty. He has introduced new exemptions allowing for conflicted remuneration—allowing payment of conflicted remuneration and commissions for advice on complex products. These exemptions will see a return to the sales culture—and those across the chamber know it. These exemptions will see the return of conflicted remuneration, allowing payment of unlimited incentives and bonuses based on sales and revenue targets and removing any requirement to disclose these incentives. Senator Cormann's reforms will allow commissions on execution services, extend grandfathering provisions so that these commissions can be traded, extend the already broad exemption for basic banking products so that it applies to all staff and remove the opt-in requirement, bringing back trailing fees. We will not allow Senator Cormann's audacity to roll back basic protections for Australian consumers, and nor should this Senate. Question agreed to.