Financial Planning and Accounting in Australia: A Contest for Jurisdiction 1980- 2014

The financial planning industry affects the lives of most Australians. From the early 1980s, social, cultural, economic and political factors saw the financial planning industry grow significantly to the extent that it now claims the status of being a separate profession. A new jurisdiction of professional service was created, with many parties eager to claim the jurisdiction. The study discusses the issue of the professionalism of the financial planning profession in Australia through a critical and historical analysis of the jurisdictional claim between financial planners and accountants. Abbott’s (1988) theory was used to determine how the accounting profession was unsuccessful in its quest for jurisdiction. The accountants certainly missed the opportunity to claim jurisdiction over financial planning in Australia. They were faced with the lingering uncertainty of their involvement in financial planning. The impact on the accountants for the contest for jurisdiction in this thesis from 1980 to 2014 was that they lost control of any claim to the financial planning profession. It details the work, legal and public claims for jurisdiction as they apply to the accounting profession over the period from the inception of financial planning in the early 1980s until December 2014 by identifying three key disturbances that were closely related...