Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No it is not for a Labor Party deficit, as the member for Bass so rightly says.

Transferring these accounts to the Commonwealth may result in some children losing out on higher interest rates because accounts transferred to the Commonwealth will only accrue the interest at the rate of the Consumer Price Index.

The bill also promotes and protects the privacy of individuals with accounts that have unclaimed moneys by removing the requirement for the Australian Securities and Investment Commission to publish details. I think this is really important. We have heard so much about the problems with this issue and the issue around identity theft by using currently published information. Some, as we know, unscrupulous businesses are also using this information to charge fees as high as 25 per cent to reunite people with their own money, the money that was taken from them by the previous Labor government. Financial institutions will not charge account holders for the services that they will provide.

To protect Australians without unclaimed moneys from exploitation, the bill will remove the requirement for ASIC to publish the Unclaimed Money Gazette and will introduce secrecy provisions to ensure that only individuals with unclaimed accounts or those acting on their behalf will be able to access their data through freedom of information requests.

I am very pleased to speak on this bill. All of us at the time thought this was a dreadful act by the Labor government of the day. I am particularly pleased that we have done exactly as we committed to do. I strongly support this bill before the House.

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