Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As much as my good friend the Assistant Treasurer tries to make out that these bills are the best thing since sliced bread, they're often very perfunctory.

Of course, this Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 6) Bill 2021 is the sixth such bill this year. But there are two schedules in this bill that I want to make a brief contribution about, noting in particular the hour and the impending adjournment speeches—which I'm sure will be much more exciting than the contributions that have been made in relation to TLAB No. 6. The schedules that I'm particularly interested in are, unsurprisingly, those schedules which have garnered some attention during this debate: schedule 2 and schedule 5.

Schedule 2, of course, has the industry code penalties under part 4B of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. We've heard other speakers who have made contributions about the fact that, effectively, this schedule takes penalty provisions and ramps them right up. This is important because penalties are important for two principal reasons. The first is to operate as specific deterrents but, equally importantly—and I'd suggest to those who may be listening to this contribution, more importantly—they provide a general deterrent. We know from the member for Higgins and from other contributors how important small and family businesses are. We also understand and know how many of those small and family businesses operate under the franchise model. It's an incredibly successful model and it has worked well across very many industries. But there's an inherent danger in it, and that inherent danger is the inequity of bargaining power as it relates to entering into that agreement at the get-go. It's very much a 'take it or leave it' approach in relation to very large corporates with offices full of franchising law experts versus mum-and-dad operators who just want to have a go.

This schedule has penalty provisions which will ensure that that inequity in bargaining power is balanced more appropriately. When I say 'penalties' I mean that it's fair enough the penalty units have gone from 300 to 600. But, for a breach of the franchising codes by a corporation, the maximum civil penalty available will be the greater of $10 million or three times the benefit obtained from the contravention or 10 per cent of the annual turnover. There are circumstances in which this penalty will be bigger or higher than you could fly a rocket ship over. So that specific and general deterrent will operate very, very effectively. I only wish that we'd had these provisions in place when we saw the outrageous behaviour of General Motors as it related to Australian franchisees in and around our communities.

My electorate has some very large employers, but many of those large employers happen to be the large car dealerships. To drive past the once proud Holden dealerships in my electorate, to see them denuded and to know that the hardworking men and women in my electorate in small business have provided the capital effectively to establish those facilities, and to think that General Motors has benefited from that investment and to see them skulk away from this nation—a nation that embraced their brand—quite frankly was disgusting. I'm pleased to see that this particular provision will go a very long way to preventing that kind of behaviour in the future.

I did say there were two schedules of importance. I'm not going to rank them. Equally important, I think, is schedule 5 and our approach to improve the visibility of superannuation assets in family law proceedings. The pool of assets in a family law matter traditionally was the home and perhaps some effects and chattels, like a car. But, of course, as superannuation balances have grown, so has the importance of that superannuation asset in the pool to be determined, settled or distributed in the course of a family law proceeding.

Before coming to this place I was a practitioner, but I'm pleased to tell you, Deputy Speaker, I was much happier dealing with defendants facing criminal proceedings than I would have been working for jilted lovers, so I stayed very much away; I never acted in relation to family law matters. But within the practice, particularly the one I was employed in before establishing my own practice, there were family law practitioners. I've got to tell you; the stories about trying to get basic information about a spouse's superannuation balance would beggar belief. They would involve rifling through filing cabinets and producing a document that might be four or five years old. Quite frankly, if a request were made formally from practitioner to practitioner for disclosure of that information, there was no legal requirement for that to be provided, and often clients would instruct practitioners not to provide that information. This meant that the parties were entering into negotiations, mediations, settlements et cetera effectively blind to the balance of the pool. That's unacceptable. It's particularly unacceptable, as we've heard from others making contributions this evening, that on average women have lower balances in their superannuation than men and that there are very many occasions in which that asset in the pool was hidden from the wife seeking a fair distribution of that pool.

Schedule 5 seeks to correct that. It seeks to make it permissible, on application to the court, from 1 April 2022, that the parties to Family Court proceedings may seek an order for disclosure of superannuation material. It stands to reason. In a way, it's surprising that we've gotten to 2021. Forget about arguments from those opposite that this was announced in 2018 or otherwise. I'm quite frankly surprised that we've come into this century having to establish this particular requirement. It should have been done in the last one, and it should have perhaps been done upon the establishment of superannuation itself. I can't reiterate enough how gobsmacked I was as a young practitioner to learn that there was no requirement on a party to disclose this information in effectively what amounts to a civil proceeding—that is, a family law settlement matter. I'm very pleased to have been part of a government and—given the support of those opposite—part of a parliament that is righting what is a very obvious wrong. With that, I'll conclude my contribution.

Debate interrupted.

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