Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I won't make a lengthy contribution on this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 6) Bill 2021, and partly that's because, out of the five schedules that this bill contains, two have been featured in previous legislation brought forward by this government and have to be now brought forward again. It is getting just a tad repetitive, I have to say—seeing the government's bumbling of its own legislative agenda over the course of this parliament.

But there are two major parts of this legislation that I do want to address my comments to. The first is schedule 2. Schedule 2 does some very important work, though it's probably not abundantly clear on the face of the legislation that it does. It increases the maximum possible penalties that can be set out in a prescribed industry code under the Competition and Consumer Act. This, in practice, will affect the franchising code, and this is being done in response to inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, of which I was a member during the last parliament, into franchising. The government's previous attempts to increase these penalties hit the rocks because the penalty increase was nowhere near substantial enough. Labor applied pressure to the government, and I'm glad to see that it has now put forward these amendments in a way that reflects the seriousness of the recommendations and the need to increase the penalties available under codes like the franchising code.

The previous Morrison government proposal proposed only a defined maximum of $133,000 for a fine—otherwise known as a slap on the wrist—for those franchisors that were found to be breaching the code. Despite a bipartisan committee report, the report of the inquiry that I referred to earlier, emphasising the need for a significant increase in penalties to be made available under the franchising code, the government's previous position was not going to deliver that. At the time, James Voortman, the CEO of the Australian Automotive Dealer Association, said that the government's proposed $133,200 penalty wouldn't even cop a mention in the annual report of a large multinational car manufacturer, and that is why they needed a penalty with teeth. Meanwhile, the CEO of the Australian Association of Franchisees, Mike Sullivan, agreed, saying that the proposed fines put forward by the Morrison government in that legislation were barely a slap on the wrist. The punishment now will be fines of up to $10 million, and that will have a real impact on the massive scale of operations that can be covered by the franchising code. It's about time that this government actually got around to standing up for the mum and dad franchisee business owners and operators who have been doing it hard with an imbalance of power for far too long. That's why we're very happy to support this component of the bill.

I also wanted to address schedule 5 of the bill because it is vitally important, and it is well overdue. Schedule 5 amends the Taxation Administration Act and the Family Law Act to create a new mechanism for sharing superannuation information in family law proceedings. Labor has been calling for this reform for many, many years, as have the family law sector and the domestic violence sector. The government announced this measure way back in November 2018 as part of its Women's Economic Security Statement, which means, clearly, for the last three years the government's been quite content with economic insecurity for the women of Australia. Typically, it's been too little, too late from this government, being delayed by nearly three years. It's simply not good enough. However, it gives a very good indication of this government's level of care.

The lack of visibility of superannuation accounts when it comes to family law proceedings is particularly damaging to the interests of divorced women, but, really, it's damaging to any former partner who will get the rough end of the financial stick. It's a well-known fact that women are at disproportionate risk of retiring with low superannuation balances, and this is particularly true for people who experience divorce or family breakdown. The lack of visibility of superannuation assets means that those assets may not be divided equally between the partners, as the current system allows assets—usually, but not always, the man's—to be hidden from the other spouse and, indeed, from the court.

This legislation will go a long way towards supporting people who are often at their wits' end in dealing with divorce proceedings. This will help level the playing field. Fundamentally, these provisions are about fairness and transparency. Anyone who opposes these measures is quite literally trying to hide something. I think it is important for people to understand the real, practical effect of making these changes by thinking about what had to happen before. While courts have had the power to deal with these superannuation accounts—though, frankly, in Western Australia only very recently have we passed legislation to enable the dealing of superannuation accounts between de facto couples, and that took way too long—when it comes with dealing with this, the courts need to be aware of the existence of those superannuation accounts. Far too often, and quite understandably, the spouse in the divorce proceedings is not aware of the superannuation account situation for the partner that they are divorcing. In fact, sometimes people aren't even aware of their own superannuation circumstances, having ghost accounts that are still living on, that haven't been closed from employment many years ago, or having funds held by the ATO that were insufficient to end up in a superannuation account.

That all means that even a partner who is trying to disclose everything may not know, and may not think about doing the full searches to find out, their full superannuation circumstances. For the other partner, where they believe, or even if they're not aware, that there are superannuation assets that are not being disclosed to them and to the court, to chase that down, to obtain subpoenas from the court and to make inquiries of every possible superannuation fund is time consuming, hugely expensive and, frankly, can be a complete waste of time. It's especially a waste of time when all of that information is already known to the ATO.

These changes allowing requests for information to go via a court registry to the ATO to provide that matched information, the information that's required for the court to make a determination about a fair, equitable and just split of assets between the divorcing couple, will make this process a lot simpler and will make sure that assets are not missed or overlooked. Crucially, in those small number of circumstances, it will mean that, where a partner has decided deliberately to dispose of assets into a superannuation account that is not disclosed and that their former partner would have no way of ever knowing about, it will be found and brought to the court's attention so that there can be a just result when it comes to the separation and division of assets between the separating couple through divorce.

When we boil it down, who suffers, ultimately, when this is not done fairly or justly? Not just is it the former partner but it's the children. We must always ask these questions: What is in the best interests of the kids? What is the fairest outcome? The changes in this schedule of this legislation are about fairness and about justice, and they are long overdue. I commend this bill to the House.

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