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

I move amendment (1) as circulated in my name:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 2), omit the table item, substitute:

Submissions from the Australian Bankers' Association (ABA), the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) suggested three years was too short a period of inactivity to deem an account unclaimed, particularly given the growing number and type of accounts that customers intentionally leave inactive for extended periods.

Submissions from institutions provided to the committee also challenged the government’s claim that owners of inactive accounts would be better off once the money in those accounts was transferred, with examples provided of many accounts where interest paid on those accounts was currently higher than CPI or inflation.

In relation to this measure, the coalition thinks that it is particularly disturbing that information provided by Treasury confirmed that they were unable to quantify the number of affected accounts. Treasury did not even know how many accounts were going to be affected but mentioned that approximately 14,000 accounts were transferred to ASIC last financial year. When questioned whether inactive accounts of active customers—for example, customers with other active accounts would be excluded—Treasury simply stated that the definition of unclaimed moneys had not changed.

It is important to note that the test for unclaimed moneys within the legislation before the House is whether or not a transaction has occurred on that account, not whether or not you have other active accounts within one institution. When the coalition pressed Treasury around current statistics for bank accounts that will be impacted by this legislation, they were only able to refer to current data under the current seven-year time limit. Of the accounts listed in ASIC's database that were transferred in the 2012 financial year, half had a balance below $1,275 and the mean account balance was approximately $4,400. Perhaps the most disturbing feature was the current largest unclaimed bank account listed in the ASIC database was for $992,750 in Carlisle, in Western Australia. If this is what is going on on ASIC's register after seven years, then how many people are going to be affected after three years? The government does not know. The coalition deems this to be an unsatisfactory policy motivation. The coalition will also move an amendment to delay the implementation date of schedule 2 to this bill, which deals with the changes to first home saver accounts, for similar reasons to that which I have outlined for the delay of schedule 1. Our amendments will also delay the start date of schedule 4 of this bill which amends unclaimed moneys in superannuation. This delay will provide a more timely introduction for the government, given the autoconsolidation changes that are due to commence on 1 January 2014.

In short, we are giving everyone time to properly consider this legislation and to properly implement it. The policy intent might be there, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer is right to say we had similar in principle unclaimed policy proposals under our government. But this government is just doing a fix to try and get the budget to surplus this year. That is all it is about, and quite frankly we are not going to cop it because we will not support legislation that is fundamentally flawed and adds to the red tape burden of everyone on an everyday basis.

See this speech in context