23 March 2026

House of Representatives

Mr TIM WILSON: The Treasury Laws Amendment (Genetic Testing Protections in Life Insurance and Other Measures) Bill 2025 is incredibly important legislation. It is a baseline test for whether or not we want an Australia that is free from discrimination based on people's life circumstances and, because we have life insurance policies, whether they make judgement calls about people based on their genetic make-up.

It's actually quite a straightforward bill in one sense. The oddity is: why did it take this long? This is not a new issue. It is not one that has not been raised in parliament before. It is not one that has not been raised as a consequence of the design of financial products. We have known for a long time that there has been a question about genetic testing and the impact it has on people's capacity to access life insurance policies. In fact, the industry has moved forward on this issue. The parliament has regularly discussed this issue. There has only been one group who have been neanderthalic in their response, and it has, of course, been the current Labor government. So we support this legislation, because, finally, they are doing something. Finally, we are actually getting action, after four years, to stop medical testing being a pathway to deny access to life insurance.

When you think about it, so many Australians, not knowing what the future holds—and none of us know what tomorrow holds, let alone today—take out life insurance policies because they simply want to be in a position to be able to support their families, beyond their current life, if, unfortunately, the worst happens, particularly with themselves and their families. Of course, while every family is different and every family has a different economic make-up, life insurance policies heavily go towards those who are principal financial contributors to the household to make sure that people have confidence in the future. But, by providing a pathway for genetic testing for life insurance, what you can end up with is people being excluded from being able to access a pool of insurance to give them protection—and that is the whole point of insurance. Insurance is a pool to mitigate risk. Risk can range from people's genetic make-up to the circumstances they face, the workplaces they work in and, of course, other factors that put or pose risks to their overall wellbeing. So it is a simple expectation that life insurance operates in a non-discriminatory way, when we know full well that people face different circumstances within their lives—and they're specifically seeking insurance to protect things like their livelihood, their income and their capacity to support their family in light of that.

So why did it take this government so long to be able to progress it? In 2019, when we were in government, we started the whole process to have this conversation. What it meant was that, by the time we got to the 2022 election, there was broad agreement across the sector, from the life insurance industry themselves. And, in September 2024, the old—remember him, the Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones? I'm not sure I'm going to say that I'm going to miss him, but let's put that to one side. I think he's off at the OECD these days. I don't know what he's doing there; you can't run interference for industry super funds there. The then Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, announced, to much fanfare—you know when they do that, when Labor get up and they announce with trumpets and songs and their own people what a wonderful job they're going to do?—that they were going to, finally, ban genetic testing.

Well, September 2024 is a fair way from where we are now, presently. But they did nothing, as a consequence. That announcement was widely welcomed and raised real expectations among Australians and the medical community—but never let the opportunity to stall, to do nothing, pass this government, which marks its success not on what it achieves for the Australian people. This government marks its success by the number of days bums sit on those seats over there, the number of days that the Prime Minister can do things like humiliate the Treasurer of the country, the extent to which the Prime Minister can occupy C1 but not actually deliver for the Australian people. That is not a good pathway for governing this country. But we are all left waiting while the Minister for Energy and Climate Change lets the country run out of oil, the Treasurer pours debt-petrol on the inflation fire, and as for the Prime Minister—well, when somebody can tell me what he's doing, I'd love to hear it.

Australians have been left waiting with the consequences of this bill while we have sat here patiently waiting for change. Now we have legislation delivered from on high, and now we have a pathway to vote for it. And what happened? It was a shock. The Coalition said: 'Yes, actually we believe in this. What's taken you so long?' The cute observations of the assistant minister on the other side of the chamber are particularly entertaining.

Mr Keogh interjecting—

Mr TIM WILSON: I'm sorry, are you a minister? I don't know. You never quite know where everybody is these days. The minister on the other side of the table has been interjecting, 'What took you so long?' I'm not sure if you noticed, Minister, but you're sitting on that side of the table. You're in government. I'm quite happy if you want to forgo that. But the reality is you did not—
Mr Keogh interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Georganas): Order!

Mr TIM WILSON: You are in government. You have a responsibility to deliver. I am quite happy to pick up the legislative agenda on your behalf and run it, if the minister or the assistant minister doesn't want to. You'll be happy to as well, won't you?

Mr Caldwell: Absolutely, let's jump over there.

Mr TIM WILSON: We'd all be quite happy to jump over and define the future of this nation, rather than just wait patiently for the Prime Minister to—

Mr Caldwell interjecting—

Mr TIM WILSON: Exactly, it's not clear. But here we are. Labor's delays have had consequences. There haven't been changes to the legislation. We are now changing that legislation. We support these reforms for simple reasons: they provide certainty, they prevent discrimination and they support better health outcomes for Australians. It's really important because, under this government, there has been so much confusion around financial services. I know this isn't necessarily a topic that keeps everybody awake at night, but financial services are so important for the strength, endurance and capacity of Australians to be empowered to live out their best lives. And what we've consistently seen under the government is they have completely mishandled financial services. This includes the problems of financial advice, which is also a subject of this bill, all the way through to, of course, doing anything they can to fatten the pig of industry super along the way.
You've got to hand it to the Labor Party. The Labor Party do understand who it is they're elected to serve; it's just not the Australian people. Once upon a time, the Labor Party were elected to serve blue-collar workers, but they don't really seem to care about them anymore. They were then elected to serve public servants, but, even when public servants wages started to outstrip private sector wages, they're weren't actually that interested in serving public servants anymore. These days, the primary purpose of the Labor Party is to serve organised capital. It's not organised workers; it's organised capital and particularly industry super funds. As we mentioned before, the former assistant treasurer has gone off to the OECD—he was probably paid off to go there so that the Labor Party could avoid having to continue dealing with him—but I imagine industry super is not that happy about it because they've lost one of their biggest advocates in this parliament.
Labor exists now to advocate for the case of organised capital to create slush funds that ultimately they influence and control. If you look at financial advice, their approach is: 'Well, how do we give all this power to industry super funds? We don't really care what the impact is on workers—people who've saved or sacrificed. It just means that we can suffocate everybody else and stop them from doing anything else to be financially independent.'

Mr Keogh interjecting—

Mr TIM WILSON: I absolutely believe in making sure that we have Australians who are financially independent, and you do that by making sure Australians have choice, agency and ownership over their future—they're not merely beaten into submission by the Labor Party to go into a select number of funds. The Labor Party pool capital, they get marketing expenses and they shower it upon themselves for their campaigning activities so that they can send members to this parliament. They can then garnish the wages of more Australians—

Mr Keogh interjecting—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Young): Order!

Mr TIM WILSON: which they can then pull into those funds and undermine the very foundations of Australians. Financial advice—

Mr Keogh: I have a point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes?

Mr Keogh: Might you draw the speaker's attention back to the topic of the bill?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I've been listening intently over your interjections, and I think that he's staying pretty relevant to the topic, so he can continue on.

Mr TIM WILSON: Thank you, Deputy Speaker! This is clearly an opportunity to point out to the minister that schedule 4 of this bill is about financial adviser registration. Clearly, the government not only is delayed; they don't even understand the bill they're trying to pass through parliament. I'll give the minister the benefit of the doubt. We do on the opposition side. We understand what the point of this bill is. I can tell you that the one thing that is the point of this bill is not to shovel more money into the hands of capital pools and organised capital simply so it can be showered on marketing expenses for the Labor Party and then go on to their campaign coffers, amongst other things, so they can then be in a position to give money to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel. I know Labor members, every time I raise this, are appalled at raising—I can tell you not a single financial adviser in this nation is going to say, 'The best pathway forward for Australians to get ahead is to give your money to organisations that then empower a government to hand money to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel.' That would be anathema to financial advice, but that is the law in Victoria and that is the law in this country right now. And that is the law that the members of the government want to make the case for.

We're supporting this bill because it doesn't actually entrench that power. We're supporting this bill because we actually believe that Australians should be empowered to live out their best lives. We're supporting this bill because we believe that life insurance should be there to pool capital and to mitigate risk and that people shouldn't be discriminated against based on their pre-existing or genetic conditions that are factors beyond themselves. But, more importantly, we're supporting this bill because we desperately want to give a reprieve to those financial advisers out there that Labor would actually really deep down like to outlaw and just throw into industry super funds. We're supporting them to be able to give financial advice to Australians. So, whether you're wealthy or you're just starting out on the ladder of opportunity, you can afford financial advice. So you can be in a position to make strategic decisions for your long-term future. And, most importantly, so that Australians can get ahead, so they don't go on then and just get financial advice from those whose recommendation is, 'Throw your money into funds the Labor Party owns so they can use it for marketing expenses and so they can campaign to sit in this chamber so they can then pass laws and appropriation bills to hand money to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel.'