Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendments and to make a few brief comments. When the matter comes to the other place, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who has had carriage of this for us for quite some time now, will be making some further comments. In rising to speak in support of the amendments and some of the measures taken in respect of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Corporate and Financial Sector Penalties) Bill 2018, I do want to note that a pattern emerges in this place. In many instances, the Greens put forward a proposal, it's initially ignored by the others, then it's ridiculed, then they fight against it and then they adopt it. That has been the case here as well. We took a very comprehensive policy to the last election, much of which we are now finding reflected in the bills and amendments before the House. We think it's no surprise that our election policy with respect to penalties and with respect to the criminal offences—we wanted penalties to be included with reference of three times the benefit gained, and all of a sudden we find a very similar measure included in the bill. We argued for increasing the range of administrative penalties that were available to regulators so that they could more easily penalise those who have done wrong, including having on-the-spot fines available for smaller offences. Lo and behold, that's also what we find in the bill. When going to the election, we also proposed making it easier for regulators to pursue the recovery of ill-gotten gains, through the introduction of a disgorgement power, and now we have relinquishment orders popping up in this bill.

So, the pattern here is very similar to what we saw with the banking royal commission, where we pushed and pushed in the teeth of opposition from Liberal and Labor. Eventually Labor came on board and others came on board and then finally the government had to relent. Now we find the government coming up with a bill that suggests that someone within the minister's office didn't necessarily have many great ideas of their own and decided to spend a lot of time reading Greens election policy and turning some of that into bits in the legislation.

This is a bill that can be improved and for that reason we support the amendments and we support the opposition in moving them. We will have more to say about this if the bill proceeds to the Senate.

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