Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

They send it to Parliament House. They know where to get us, don't they, Martin? There are two ways they get us. They know where to contact us. But even then they get it wrong, and there is no opportunity for correction in that regard. Someone might leave money sitting in a bank to accumulate interest in a high-interest-yielding account. What is the administrative cost to the bank if, after three years, they cannot find them, and the money is taken out of a high-yield account and sent to the Australian Taxation Office? What happens to the individuals? We do not know after that. It is not clear exactly what the impact is, what the procedures are for contacting the Australian Taxation Office.

What we do know is that the Australian Taxation Office is going to pay a lot less interest on the account than the bank might pay. Now we discover that the mining companies are going to get over 10 per cent compound interest on royalties. That was a good deal, Martin—10 per cent compound interest on royalty rebates to the mining companies if they do not pay the mining tax! If we get a rebate from the tax office, I think they give us CPI or something like that, but, if the mining companies do not pay the mining tax, the government not only has a one-year liability to refund their royalties—but there is no mining tax, so they cannot refund the royalties—but the royalty liability is carried over to the next year and the mining companies get over 10 per cent compound interest, payable by the Commonwealth taxpayer. That is fantastic—Commonwealth guaranteed, of course! But, for everyday Australians, if the government seizes your bank account after three years or seizes your superannuation after 12 months, you will be lucky if you get CPI. Fair dinkum!

We did not see this coming either: schedule 2 of this bill amends the First Home Saver Accounts Act to provide for new arrangements for unclaimed moneys held by First Home Saver Accounts providers. So people putting money into their First Home Saver Accounts, trying to save for their first home, if they get hit with a few bills and do not access the account for three years—bingo! The First Home Saver Accounts are meant to be new measures. Many parents have established these accounts for their children, but they may not be able to make a contribution for a number of years. It might be getting a bit tough out there, as we know it is for some families. What happens? We would have thought, again, that the parliamentary joint committee inquiry would have looked at the impact of that on the trends of saving by parents for their children in First Home Saver Accounts—gone. That is another one that came out of the blue that we found out about last night.

Schedule 3 to the bill amends the Life Insurance Act to provide new arrangements for unclaimed life insurance moneys. There are two limbs to the definition of unclaimed moneys in the Life Insurance Act. Unclaimed moneys include sums payable on the maturity of the policy which are not claimed within seven years from the maturity of the policy. The new arrangement will reduce the period before life insurance moneys are treated as unclaimed moneys from seven years to three years. How many people are going to be affected? We do not know. What are the circumstances? We do not know. We have not been able to speak to life insurance companies to find out the trend impact.

Maybe people want to leave their money in life insurance; they do not want to collect it at the age of 55 or 65 or whenever it might mature. Maybe some people who lost a partner did not know they had life insurance.

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