Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

The honourable member would know that share markets and financial markets respond to all sorts of things. Often, that can be regarded by clear-eyed and rational commentators as being overly exuberant. Nevertheless, the markets do respond, and I would suggest that there have been plenty of occasions where markets have responded to a lot less than a press statement from an organisation like Telstra. As I said before, the government fully expected this information to be market sensitive. That is why we made the announcement when the market was closed—because that was the appropriate thing to do.

Again, I will refer the member for North Sydney’s comments to ASIC. There are continuous disclosure obligations, as the member knows, on all companies. I have no reason to doubt that Telstra have complied with those continuous disclosure obligations, but the appropriate organisation to consider the honourable member’s point is ASIC and I will draw his comments to their attention.

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