Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

B minus! Do you use the alphabet system still? Yes, we'll give the government a pass because it is actually going in the right direction. It is attending to the problem of corporate misconduct. It's seeking to protect the interests of the public and the taxpayer by preventing the scheme being misused and public moneys being accessed improperly, completely against the spirit of the scheme. It's not a focus on stripping back the scheme, as was the original intention of the government in 2014—and I think they held that position for many years after that. But there's been no real debate about that. I'm glad to say that Labor were stalwart resisters of the proposition by the government that we should strip the FEG scheme back to the original Howard scheme.

This bill is worth supporting, but we think it can be a better bill if some of the amendments that we will be moving in the Senate are considered. We will have plenty of time; the Senate won't debate this matter until the end of November. Well, it may come on before then. If it does come on before then in the Senate, I'm willing to speak directly with the minister. She's invited me to talk to her about a range of matters, including this one, and I will take her up on that invitation and talk to her about the ways we think we can improve the bill.

We would start by looking at whether, in fact, we need to consider some elements around fighting the phoenixing that occurs all too often—where a company goes bust and then reappears, and somehow manages to avoid its creditors and its corporate obligations. We'd like to think that we could also improve this bill in other ways, and I think there are opportunities for us to do that. If the minister and the government are serious about that proposition, I think this bill—quite a good bill; deficient but quite good—could be a better bill. It could be better for workers insofar as giving them better security, better for taxpayers in terms of protecting their interests and better at holding companies and directors to account.

There have been criminal sanctions on the statute books for 18 years, and yet no-one has been convicted under those provisions—which really speaks to, I think, a failure; there's no point having such sanctions contained within our statute books if they're never going to be used—even when there's been misconduct that should have seen, at least, sentencing of certain individuals who acted in contravention of those laws. So I think there is an opportunity to improve the bill, and I would be very happy to discuss this with the minister soon and see whether we can reach agreement on all matters that are relevant and incidental to the substantive provisions of this bill.

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