This is such a hot debate at the moment, so I thought why not just throw in my $0.02 worth!
Our firm moved away from commissions a long time ago, simply becuase we knew that it was right thing to do. Today, we are 100% fee based, and it's quite a liberating feeling to know that you don't have any conflicts of interest.
You'll find that the industry has "grown up" on a diet of insurance, managed funds and superannuation. It is going to take some time to get financial planners to accept property, holistic planning rather than the share bias that there is out there at the moment. Because most of the "dealers" out there control their planners, and the "dealers" are owned or controlled by banks and/or investment product providers, you can see where some of the bias comes from.
However, one issue that is really interesting is that when a younger financial planner is studying, most of the study is around managed funds, shares, super etc. Very little attention is given to debt reduction strategies, property accumulation ideas, asset protection etc etc.
So, we're not teaching planners the right way, their mentors grew up learning the wrong things, and the firms that ultimately control a large part of the industry only have self interest at heart.
An finally, the Aust Govt Treasury came out with a statement recently saying that "Getting rid of commission, while good as an idea, has too many practical issues that will make it impossible to do" - so we expect to see some pretty watered down legislation regarding commissions - if they make many changes at all.
I've been proudly recommending real estate for all my clients for my whole career, so do all the other planners that we work with. It came from growing up in the right culture. One day, we expect what we do is the norm. For now, however, I still get some very strange looks at industry days when I tell people how we do what we do.
Ok, maybe that was about $0.08 worth this time, but just had to share a little