Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very valuable opportunity, in the couple of minutes I have, to highlight the unconscionable conduct of Australia's most dishonest NGO, GetUp! In 2012, GetUp! thought it would be an impressive stunt to use flaws in the Corporations Law to have 204 of their members call a $2 million meeting of the full membership and board of Woolworths—costing millions of dollars and forcing up the price of groceries. It was a stunt that, in the end, secured the support of only three per cent of those who attended—with, obviously, 97 per cent voting against the motion. This was an appalling display by a completely untrustworthy NGO. GetUp! is an organisation that has been consistently opaque in its objectives. It has a number of shadowy figures that support many of its elusive and fairly dodgy objectives, many of which are designed to be significantly anti-coalition.

The Corporations Law could in fact do with a fair bit of tightening up—$14 million of compliance requirements are removed with these changes. To think that we could have a Labor government for six years that thought it was utterly appropriate for a company limited by guarantee to be forced to appoint an auditor even if they are not required to provide an audit report—what an extraordinary omission! But then, if for six years you basically regard business as the enemy of the state, you can live with that kind of inadequate Corporations Law and do nothing about it. I am glad to say the coalition are doing something about it.

The changes in the Corporations Legislation Amendment (Deregulatory and Other Measures) Bill 2014 are , in many cases, minor tightenings. There are small changes to the Remuneration Tribunal. We are better balancing the rights of shareholders. We are making sure that, if 100 shareholders wish to put something on the agenda for the next meeting of the board of a publicly listed company, that can still occur. Shareholders also still have a significant say over remuneration. Twenty-five per cent of shareholders voting no on remuneration in two successive meetings can force a spill—all of that still exists. So the Corporations Law will be significantly improved at every level and $14 million dollars in utterly ridiculous compliance costs will be removed from Australian businesses. This is the kind of thing the coalition is getting on with doing. It raises the obvious point: why couldn't six years of Labor government carry out these fairly elementary reforms? The simple answer is that it was beyond their wit. They are a Labor government that never worked with business. They regarded them as the enemy of the state. Of course, times are changing and we are improving things for business in this country.

Debate interrupted.

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