Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate that, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall do that. At this point I will now begin an educational session for those opposite on how companies operate. I am so glad that they get to vote on bills that define how our companies operate. What happens is that there are these things called superannuation funds and they invest in listed companies. What the chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission—who knows a little bit about Corporations Law and who knows a little bit about corporate governance—was saying today was that those superannuation funds have been misusing their position and been involved in insider trading. In doing so, they have been in breach of their general duties as directors in terms of the way they have been conducting themselves.

When we get to virtual AGMs, which is what this bill is about, it would suit those opposite to ensure that the investors elected by big super, who are the big donors to the Labor Party, are not subjected to the sort of rigorous examination that the owners of a company should normally have. What we have here is a bill that brings our corporate governance and the way that our annual general meetings operate into the 21st century. We have those opposite moving their usual amendments and other things so that theyvoteforyou.org.au can have a little go and spread their fake news and misinformation, which is what they love doing, because that's how those opposite operate. If they really thought the Australian people agreed with them, they'd tell the Australian people what they think.

Where was I? Relevance. Where we're at now, as I speak for the next 10 minutes and 37 seconds, is the following—the member for Whitlam can't handle the heat in the kitchen, so he has to leave the chamber. Member for Whitlam, I dare you to stay; I dare you to listen to the truth, which is that big super is, at this moment, undermining the very importance of what it is for our listed companies to have corporate governance. I welcome the member for Whitlam back to the dispatch box. No, he's just lurking.

What we have here is a piece of legislation that will ensure that we can do what is required to make it possible for us to bring corporate governance and annual general meetings into the 21st century. Why is this important? It's important for a number of reasons. The first is that, during this pandemic, Australians got very used to conducting business online. They got very used to how important it is and how easy it is to do. Secondly, it actually broadens the number of people who can attend these meetings. That means that directors and boards will be subjected to more oversight because, simply put, there will be more investors and more owners of those companies at these meetings.

When they're at these meetings, two things will happen. The first is that they will be given the opportunity to ask questions of directors and of management to ensure that their investments are being undertaken in the interests of both shareholders and customers. I wonder how many of these very large corporates would be such advocates and funders of all the woke causes they are advocates and funders of if investors, their owners, were able to ask them questions like: how does it benefit employees, how does it benefit customers and how does it benefit us, the owners of the corporations?

As we know, most of this funding goes on because it benefits management. They get invited to all the swanky dinner parties where they can all tell each other what a great job they're doing and how they're saving the world as they fly from one end of the world to the other in a private jet—no doubt using shareholder funds to achieve this—and lecture other people about the importance of corporates needing to be involved in all these very important and earnest public policy issues.

I understand why some directors and some proxy advisers are so opposed to this idea. If they were in favour of this idea of not just blindly following what the proxy adviser tells management and the board to do, and owners actually had a say, owners could attend these meetings and ask difficult questions on behalf of customers and employees. I don't mean to shock the intolerant and regressive Left by making this point. They say, 'People before profit,' but without people there is no such thing as a profit. The whole point of profit is that someone, somewhere, is voluntarily willing to hand over their money for a good or service that you are willing to provide to them voluntarily. That is why the market works so much better than government: because we take money from people without asking them—often, if they had a choice, they would never give it to us—and then provide them with services that in some cases they don't want, in most cases they don't need and in many, many cases do more harm than good. If government were a company, where people had a choice about whether they wanted to buy the service or good that we were providing, I can tell you now I'm not sure that we would survive one reporting season. That is why market economies work so much better than centralised government economies.

At the moment, I'm involved in a great inquiry to determine why housing in Australia is so unaffordable. We have this situation where we have more land than basically any other nation in the world in terms of per capita landmass. Our densities are the lowest in the world outside the penguin population on the South Pole! We have the highest average weekly earnings in the world, though those opposite, once again, seek to falsify information to say that we don't. Yet we have the most unaffordable housing in the world. Why is that the case? It's because we have a centralised planning system in the provision of housing.

So we have these AGM reforms, which are actually about bringing more people into the discussion about how companies are operated, and those opposite seek to pretend somehow that this is a bad idea. It's not. The more people who have access to democracy, the better democracy is. I would also point out to those opposite that in this democratic system that is shareholder capitalism, you have to identify that you own some shares. You see, voter IDs work very well in all sorts of different elections. But the point that I would primarily make in all of this, the point that I would strongly make in all of this, is that if you can't get access to the meeting it doesn't work.

We see here that big super is opposed to this. We see that proxy advisers are opposed to this. We see all these sorts of things going on ad nauseum. Why are people opposed to them? It's because they're opposed to ordinary, average Australians, the working men and women of this country, being able to have a say on how companies that they're invested in both operate and behave. Those opposite would prefer that the working men and women of Australia give all their money to big super, to Industry Super, and then Industry Super will tell these companies how to operate.

We've already seen how this has started to happen. We've seen Industry Super in breach of their legal obligations, forcing companies to enter into enterprise agreements even though that is not in the interests of employees, shareholders or customers. Once again I encourage APRA to do their job and actually uphold the law when it comes to Industry Super. The more I think about it, the more I understand why those opposite are so opposed to shareholders having a say in the organisations that they have ownership in—because those opposite would prefer the collective in industry super to have a say, so of course they want to keep people offline. They would probably prefer that all these AGMs occur in the boardrooms in Collins Street where industry super presides. That's where they want them all—where the directors of those companies, according to the chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, have been gathering insider information and then trading on that information. It's extraordinary that those opposite come in here and lecture us this side about the Hayne royal commission but fail to point out that all of the investigations into industry super, and all the misappropriate and inappropriate governance in those areas, are falling over, one by one, like bowling pins. Of course, the more democracy we have, the more transparency we have, which you would have—

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