Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Greenway for her question. I think all members of the House would welcome the fact that the James Hardie company has now recognised its liability to those suffering from asbestos related diseases and that shareholders have now approved financial arrangements which should enable the company to meet its just liabilities—which it should never have sought to avoid when it entered into a very complicated arrangement to remove itself to the Netherlands. I can inform the House that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has now commenced civil action against the company and a number of former and current directors and executives.

These proceedings should not affect the compensation arrangements in any respect whatsoever, but the proceedings which have been taken by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission seek pecuniary penalties of up to a maximum of $200,000 per breach and the regulator is asking the court to consider banning individuals from acting as company directors in the future. Of course, these are just proceedings at this point—and, under our legal system, anybody is entitled to the presumption of innocence—but I want to remind the House that the government has been very clear about the necessity to bring to justice anybody who may have been in breach of the Corporations Act. Indeed, that is the reason why the government gave $7.5 million to fund this investigation and it is why the government passed the James Hardie (Investigations and Proceedings) Act 2004 so that evidence could go to ASIC from the Jackson inquiry. It is as a consequence of those measures that these proceedings have now been taken.

Members will recall that it was proposed by the New South Wales government that it would give a release to the directors of James Hardie so that they would not be required to face proceedings of this kind. Members of the House will recall me raising that matter in this House and the Commonwealth opposing it. Fortunately, we were successful in preventing the New South Wales government from doing any such thing. If it had done any such thing, these proceedings could not have been brought. In fact, I got a letter from the CFMEU state secretary for New South Wales, Mr Andrew Ferguson—who is well known to people in this House—as recently as yesterday, asking me what the Commonwealth government was doing about this investigation. It is clear what the Commonwealth was doing about it. I should mention in passing that, if the Commonwealth had not been on the job, the New South Wales government would have given releases to prevent these actions from being taken. I think Mr Andrew Ferguson would be very pleased that the Commonwealth government was on the job, preventing the New South Wales Labor government from doing what it then proposed.

I also mention in passing that federal Labor was proposing as recently as a few months ago a new tax break for James Hardie—a company-specific tax break for James Hardie—to give it an improved financial position to meet its just liabilities. That was being proposed by the member for Hunter with amendments in this House. This company never deserved a company-specific tax break. This company should have been, and now has been, brought to its just liabilities—without any tax privileges as were proposed by the federal Labor Party. These proceedings have now been brought—without any releases as were proposed by the New South Wales Labor government. That was an ask from James Hardie, a piece of brinkmanship which it tried to pull on, just as it tried to pull on the removal of the liability by a complicated relocation to the Netherlands. As this government has made clear all along, we believe those that may have breached their corporate law obligations should be brought to court, and these proceedings will do that.

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