Chris Pearce (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

The minister is misrepresenting the opposition’s position and particularly my words. I am disappointed that the minister would take such a tactic and line. I really am disappointed in that. I can remember the situation being quite reversed on a number of occasions during the last term of the last parliament. I can remember the now minister, who is at the table, serving it up to the then government quite strongly. The minister really should not take the position of the pot calling the kettle black, should he?

The minister is failing to recognise that the ASIC order and bans currently exist. The market is currently operating under those orders and they can continue to exist. As a matter of fact, the ban on the short selling of financials is currently in place until towards the end of January. If, for some reason, ASIC needed to extend that, the minister knows they can do that very easily. So there is a regime that is in place and that argument is a nonsense. Clearly, the government have not done their work. The industry—and I am only echoing the concerns of the industry—is obviously very concerned and distressed about this. If it goes through as it is, it will create even more uncertainty. I would have thought that the government and the minister may have been open to our proposal, given the dislocation and the enormous impacts that the government’s policy on the bank guarantee has had. I would have thought that the government may have learnt their lesson—that they are not particularly good at this sort of thing. They have got it wrong before, and what we were seeking to do was provide a legitimate opportunity for the government to actually do it properly and go about it in a proper way.

Question put:

That the amendment (Mr Pearce’s) be agreed to.

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