Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Deputy Chairman , Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the shadow Treasurer, the member for North Sydney, to speak on the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013. The coalition will be supporting this legislation—necessary legislation to amend the government's own recently passed bill to clean-up yet another mess created by this chaotic government. The bill before the House now seeks to amend the government's own policy that was announced late last year—a policy motivated by this Treasurer's waxing desperation in the face of his then waning budget surplus.

The government's evaporating surplus late last year sent it, as we all remember, into a feverish quest for savings, some of which were announced in MYEFO December 2012—actually it was earlier than December. This search for every dollar and cent it could find led it to announce an array of changes relating to unclaimed moneys in bank accounts, life insurance accounts, superannuation accounts and corporations. The changes, as many members will recall, sought to shorten the time period before money can be considered lost or unclaimed. That is precisely what the government's announced policy and legislation did sometime ago. For bank accounts, the time period was reduced from seven to three years. For life insurance, it was likewise cut from seven to three years. For superannuation accounts, the inactivity period was slashed from five years to just 12 months, after which superannuation accounts of unidentifiable members are transferred to the Australian Taxation Office. Superannuation accounts with balances of less than $2,000 and accounts of unidentifiable members that were inactive for 12 months were required to be transferred to the commissioner. Any unclaimed property of corporations was to be counted as part of the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund upon receipt by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which we all know as ASIC, not the companies and unclaimed moneys special account.

This was all designed with one purpose in mind: for the government to boost their underlying cash position. It was the desperate grab for money that led the government to consider these changes which it had never considered in any of its previous years. Indeed, the measures that were announced, we were told, were expected to net the government nearly $900 million over the four-year period to 2015-16.

A government controlled Senate economics committee inquiry was held into the bill and recommended that the bill be passed, but coalition members of the committee inquiry at the time disagreed and chose to publish a dissenting report. The coalition then moved a series of amendments that sought to delay implementation of schedules 1 and 2, which relate to bank accounts and first home saver accounts, for a full year so that they would commence from 31 December of this year to feed into the banks' annual processes, which had largely been completed for this calendar year when the government made its MYEFO announcement last year. The coalition also sought to delay schedule 4 relating to superannuation accounts for a full year in order to align with the deadline of the autoconsolidations necessary under the previously announced SuperStream reforms, which are due to commence from 1 January 2014.

When the coalition's amendments were defeated on the floor of this House, the opposition voted against passage of this bill both here and in the other place. The government then introduced its own amendments that, amongst other things, sought to change transitional arrangements for Australian deposit-taking institutions and first home saver accounts. These amendments were introduced so that Australian deposit-taking institutions and first home saver accounts could choose between assessing unclaimed moneys at 31 December 2012, in line with the original seven-year period, and having a supplementary assessment date of 30 May 2013 for payment to occur in line with the revised three-year period. The bill stated:

… ADIs are required to report and transfer all unclaimed moneys as assessed on the applicable assessment date, including reactivated accounts, to the Commonwealth regardless of whether transactions have been made on the accounts prior to the reporting date.

As a consequence, Australian deposit-taking institutions, as well as first home saver accounts, either would be committing an offence by not transferring all unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth or would need to close the reactivated accounts and transfer these to the Commonwealth.

Some Australian deposit-taking institutions have reported and transferred unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth, including amounts for reactivated accounts. But as a common courtesy to their customers, rather than closing and transferring the reactivated accounts to the Commonwealth some Australian deposit-taking institutions have kept the reactivated accounts of their customers active and retained their customer's balance amount, but paid the required unclaimed amounts on behalf of their customers from their own funds. In other words, deposit-taking institutions moved to shield their customers from the consequences of a government policy that served no real purpose other than to prop up a budget position at the expense of Australian account holders.

This brings us to this set of amendments, which is to fix up, frankly, the government's own stuff ups. That is what these amendments are: they are amendments to fix up the government's stuff-ups. That is why we are back here again before the House, trying to make bad legislation better. The government, as they have always done in this parliament, have rushed, listened to no-one and made errors that they have then been forced to confront, and that is why we are back here fixing them.

The Commonwealth, as a result of the government's original policy and legislation, does not currently have the authority to refund monies to those Australian deposit-taking institutions directly, even though they have acted as an intermediary returning unclaimed monies to account holders. The amendments we are debating today will permit such refunds so that these Australian deposit-taking institutions are able to receive a refund directly from the Commonwealth for the money that has been collected. The amendments will also allow Australian deposit-taking institutions to exclude reactivated accounts from transfers of unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth.

How embarrassing! This, as I said, is another example of this government rushing and mucking up their legislation, and then trying to clean it up. It all comes from the Treasurer down—the Treasurer's Keystone Cops habit of making policy on the run.

There have been many media stories relating how the bank accounts of families, pensioners and even children have been raided. It has been an absolute disgrace. I will take the time just to refer to a couple. On 26 May the Sunday Herald-Sun, my hometown paper, under a headline, 'Raid on kids' cash: Government grab nets boys' savings,' talks about the Hadfield family, who:

… were shocked to find the savings of their eldest children … had gone into government coffers last week

And up in the state of Queensland, the state where my good friend the member for Moncrieff is a representative, in The Courier Mail:

Savings snatch $150,000 plucked from account under new laws. A BRISBANE woman has had more than $150,000 taken from her bank account by the Federal Government in the latest example of savers suffering under recent legislative changes.

And there was another story in The Courier Mail about a Queensland pensioner recovering from a quintuple heart bypass only to find his bank account had been emptied, handing $22,000 to the federal government.

And all of this was so unnecessary. We support these amendments to seek to repair some of the worst aspects of bad legislation by this bad government. But what has also been obvious all along is that this government have not just a capacity for continual chaos on the policy front—and I know that my colleagues, the members for Gippsland and Moncrieff will agree on this—but also a strident and unembarrassable feature about them: at no point have this government said, 'Look, we got it wrong; we're sorry'.

In fact, if you look back to the second reading speech from the responsible parliamentary secretary—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer—introduced on Wednesday 29 May, he talks about the amendments in a very matter-of-fact way. But at no point does he say that these amendments are necessary because of government oversight. He does not even have the candour say, 'Look, on behalf of the government I apologise: we got it wrong'. You see it even in those newspaper stories I referred to just before. I think it was the Sunday Herald-Sun story in particular. If you look at the end of that story you see:

A spokeswoman for Treasurer Wayne Swan said people would be better off under the new rules.

That is unbelievable.

This series of amendments will clean-up some of the mess created by the government, but it is, in so many ways, not only a window into this government's chaotic approach to policymaking but an illustration—another example, of which there have been so many on so many pieces of legislation—of where the government refuses to consult, refuses to listen and insists on rushing. Then the Australian people—families and small businesses—have to deal with the consequences of this government's incompetence.

As I said, the coalition supports this legislation to try to help clean-up the government's mess. But in the dying days of this parliament, the Australian people would do very well to look at the record of this government when it comes to legislation, to look at how it has rushed through bill after bill. My friend the member for Moncrieff was here just the other week when, three years after being told that this was the parliament where we would let the sunlight in, the opportunity was denied for even an inquiry on a piece of legislation. To the Australian people who have had to endure this for the last three years, and as we come to the final days of sitting in this parliament, the government is truly showing its approach to governing. In their heart of hearts they have had enough evidence now to know that a bad government will never get better.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to support the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013. The coalition supports it not because it is some brilliant piece of policy work by the Labor Party, not because it in some way represents the zenith of attainment when it comes to good fiscal and monetary policy by the Labor Party, but because this bill goes to correcting yet another mistake made by this government and, hence, the need for another amendment moving through this chamber as the government attempts to put another bandaid on a broken piece of legislation.

This Labor Party is quite extraordinary. Time and time and time again we have seen examples of how the Labor Party has, frankly, misused legislation and policy decisions, not in the interests of the Australian people but for one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is the political interests of the Australian Labor Party. The forefather—for lack of a better term—piece of legislation for the amendment currently before the House has to do with the government's attempts to prop up this year's budget as part of their 'guaranteed' budget surplus. My constituents in Moncrieff and on the Gold Coast have heard, I believe, on more than 500 occasions the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and a whole raft of backbenchers and members of the Labor Party say, as they looked Australians in the eye: 'The good times are back. We're delivering a surplus.'

Who would forget the Treasurer last year standing up at the dispatch box, staring down the camera and saying, 'Tonight's the first night of a budget surplus and will be the first of four years of budget surpluses'? That is what the Treasurer said. There may even have been some Australians who thought: 'The member for Lilley seems like a decent bloke, he's regarded as the world's greatest Treasurer, so it must be true. Clearly, they're going to deliver a budget surplus.' And to drive the point home, on 500 occasions they roamed about the country saying, 'This is the first of four years of budget surpluses.' What do we know to be true? Unfortunately, entirely consistent with Labor Party genealogy, entirely consistent with Labor Party form, instead of having a budget surplus—oops, a $19.4 billion deficit. 'That's okay, just missed it by that much—next year we know that we're going to have a budget surplus.' Oops, no, another $18 billion of deficit. 'It's okay, year 3—that's the year for the surplus.' But again, alas, a $16 billion deficit.

This is a government that has simply lost its way when it comes to spending. That is the reason this government has racked up $192 billion worth of budget deficits since it was elected. That is the reason this government presides over peak gross debt approaching $340 billion currently and on its way to more than $400 billion. That is the legacy of the Labor Party.

The amendment before the House tonight goes to the very core of their political manipulation to try to prop up the budget bottom line. How do they seek to do it? They seek to prop up that pathetic budget bottom line that the, apparently, world's greatest Treasurer has presided over by saying to the Australian people: 'We've got a brilliant public policy initiative.' Currently—that is, prior to the announcement—if an account had no transactions upon it for a period of seven years it would be deemed to be unclaimed money and the money would effectively be forfeited to the Commonwealth to become part of consolidated revenue. So, with a brilliant piece of financial engineering by the member for Lilley, Wayne Swan, they said, 'We're going to reduce it from seven years down to three years without there being any transactions on an account,' not because it was good public policy but because of the financial impact it would have.

What was the financial impact? By doing that, in that first year alone—that is, the financial year 2012-13—it meant an extra $93.4 million for this government. More importantly, they also included in schedule 4 of the original bill the unclaimed superannuation accounts. What did that mean for those who had unclaimed super? An additional $513.5 million for the Labor Party in the financial year 2012-13. And for companies and corporations unclaimed funds, it represented $94 million for 2012-13. So a grand total of $700.9 million has resulted from this change to public policy by, apparently, the world's greatest Treasurer.

That is the legacy of the Australian Labor Party: to make whimsical changes to policy that have a direct impact on people's lives just so they could attempt to prop up their budget bottom line and deliver the then forecast budget surplus of $1 billion or $1.5 billion. How pathetic! It is the reason the Australian people see straight through the member for Lilley and straight through this Prime Minister, because they know that they cannot trust the Australian Labor Party when it comes to financial management. Because they were in such a tremendous rush to push the legislation through and because the Labor Party was so focused on doing whatever they could to prop up their pathetic budget bottom line, they made some mistakes including, for example, the fact that now under the legislation as it currently exists, deposit-taking institutions that had for all intents and purposes an unclaimed savings account—let us say it was an offset account that someone was using against their mortgage—sitting there without transactions on it as an offset account, that money would be claimed by the Commonwealth and effectively go into consolidated revenue. Because there was a difference between the assessment date and the date the funds were referred to the Commonwealth, you actually had occasions arise when money that qualified as being 'unclaimed' as of the assessment date would then subsequently have transactions on the account prior to the date the money was referred to the Commonwealth. In that situation it did not matter, because under the law as rammed through this parliament by the Labor Party, that money had to come to the Commonwealth.

So people would have funds—as I said, to use the hypothetical situation of an account that was used as an offset against someone's mortgage—sitting there that would be deemed to be unclaimed funds. Wayne Swan's hand would reach through the bank, rip those funds back to the Commonwealth and then maybe someone would put a deposit down or make a withdrawal on that account. But it did not matter. Even though the account was still active, under the legislation that was rammed through this parliament by the Labor Party, they still had to give the funds to the Commonwealth.

That gives rise to the reason why we have legislation before the House now amending that perverse situation. Quite clearly, the account is not unclaimed. Quite clearly, if there are transactions on the account which take place after the assessment date then it should not be qualified as unclaimed funds. So the government attempts now to stick a bandaid on their rather broken-down and grubby piece of legislation, that was first introduced by the Treasurer and rammed through this parliament. That is the reason why the coalition supports this legislation. It is not because it is the zenith of good policy insight from the Australian Labor Party but rather because this is a much-needed correction to a defect that exists in the original legislation.

The simple inescapable reality though is this: there would be absolutely no need for this amendment or indeed the original legislation had the government managed Australia's economy a little better. There would be no need for the Commonwealth, in my view, to inappropriately take funds after only three years purely and simply as an attempt to prop up what is, effectively, one year of the government's bottom line as part of their quest to achieve a paltry $1 billion to $1½ billion surplus. Now that we know that the actual deficit was $19.4 billion, it all seems rather tawdry. It all seems rather tawdry that constituents had to come into my office only three weeks ago wanting to know how they had to go about claiming back their own money in order to be able to have it back under their control and not under the Commonwealth's control. I can only imagine what it must feel like for those who are not tuned into the daily to-ing and fro-ing of the financial world and of this parliament—for example, a retired couple who might have toiled their entire working lives to squirrel away some money to have as an offset against their mortgage or some kind of savings account for a rainy day or, indeed, for their retirement, to wake up and perhaps check the balance of their account to find the money gone. They would wonder and fret about what that actually meant and not know that it is all part of an attempt by the member for Lilley to prop up the media headlines and his pathetic budget balance in one financial year as part of this government's attempt to try to make out that they were delivering the budget back to surplus.

That is the real-world impact. That is the real-world impact on people who are not, perhaps, incredibly financially literate and who wonder where their money has gone. Is it any wonder that we see headlines like these: 'Savings snatch $150,000 plucked from account under new laws', or this: 'Savings grab a heartless act—Bank gives "unclaimed" cash to Canberra'. Australians rightly think that this is theft. Certainly there is not an intention to permanently deprive, granted, but that notwithstanding, it is in their eyes—and I know from speaking with people who have been affected by these changes—that they view it as theft. I think that they have every right to view this is theft. They have got every right to be very angry with the Australian Labor Party when they see their funds being transferred from their accounts straight into the government's coffers because Wayne Swan wants to prop up his bottom line. Australians lost their confidence in this government quite some time ago and this latest change, the legislation to alter the time frames on unclaimed money, is simply the latest nail in the coffin, frankly, about why the Australian Labor Party is just so on the nose with the Australian people.

Legislation before the House that seeks to amend the original piece of legislation does deserve to be supported, not because, as I said, it is a positive step forward but because it corrects an error from the original legislation. But more broadly than that, there is at stake a fundamental principle here: the right for Australians to think that this is a government that is concerned with their welfare and their financial wellbeing, as opposed to a government which in reality, as we all know, is more focused on their political survival and about propping up their pathetic bottom line than about making those good policy choices.

Another point of concern to me is that I have a regular spot on ABC radio in Brisbane against the member for Oxley and when I called the member for Oxley on Labor's policy I said, in sentiments very similar to those I have expressed this evening, that this was a gross grab for cash by the Labor Party and that it represented a net gain of some $900 million—nearly $1 billion—for the Labor government. The member for Oxley, much to my amazement, rejected it and made the statement that the changes had no net impact on government revenue and that, in fact, it was in the interests of the account holders, because the funds could have been sitting in an account without any interest but now they would be going to the government where they would get interest. If this does not represent what is going on, if it does not represent the low point in public policy debate and if it does not represent how much this is a government obsessed with spin about what it is up to, then I do not know of a clearer example that possibly exists today.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013. This bill is nothing other than a fix-up of yet another of the government's stuff-ups. That is no surprise when you look at the speakers list. There is not one speaker from the government listed to speak on this bill and to defend what is happening here because they know, to their embarrassment, that it is a complete stuff-up and they do not want to be associated with it.

This bill amends section 69 of the Banking Act to exempt reactivated accounts from being reported and transferred to the Commonwealth. It will also give the Treasurer power to refund moneys to authorise deposit-taking institutions if moneys are collected unnecessarily. The bill will provide transitional provisions for the supplementary statement and payment, allowing ADIs to exempt reactivated accounts from being reported and transferred to the Commonwealth and will give power to the Treasurer to refund any reactivated accounts which have already been collected. As I said, this bill is just another example of the failure of this government, another example of bringing in rushed, ill-considered legislation to this parliament and of mistake after mistake that needs to be rectified.

We should go back to try to understand how the government actually came to this complete mess. It is necessary to go back to those heady days last year, when it was all about returning the budget to surplus. We heard that mantra time and time again: 'We are returning the budget to surplus.' We had the Prime Minister getting around the country saying, with respect to returning the budget to surplus, 'Failure is not an option.' We had Senator Wong telling us:

… the government has made it clear that the return to surplus is not negotiable …

We had the Treasurer promising to return the budget to surplus and that it would be done 'come hell or high water'.

Who will ever forget the Treasurer's opening line on budget night last year—a line that will go down in history, along with the lines of the Iraqi Information Minister, 'Comical Ali,' known for his grandiose and grossly unrealistic propaganda broadcasts, extolling the invincibility of Saddam's army—when he, the Treasurer, standing at that very dispatch box, boldly proclaimed on budget night last year, to the hysterical laughter around the chamber:

This Budget delivers a surplus this coming year, on time, as promised, and surpluses each year after that, strengthening over time.

It reminds me of one of Comical Ali's best performances when, standing in front of the TV cameras, he said:

There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad.

And behind him we had American tanks rolling along.

We even had the member for Lindsay, to his internal embarrassment, sending out letters throughout his electorate, proclaiming: 'This government actually achieved returning the budget to surplus.' I wonder if he has actually sent out an apology for that. Albeit that this great surplus that we were returning to was just $1.5 billion and that came after this government had delivered the four largest budget deficits in our nation's history—a cumulative $172 billion in the red—the government said, 'We're returning the budget to surplus; we have $1.5 billion.' What brilliance!

With such political imperative of returning the budget to surplus the government were like an addict looking for a quick fix. They went on the look for cash. They had their eyes on the bank accounts of Australian mums and dads. They had their eyes on the bank accounts of pensioners and even on the bank accounts of children. 'What a bounty; if only we could get our hands on that money and transfer it to government revenue.' So they came up with this scheme, under the unclaimed moneys rules of the Banking Act, which gave them the ability to raid every bank account in the nation that had simply not had a deposit or withdrawal made to it in the last 36 months. That did not include interest payments.

There were thousands of accounts around the nation that people had put their money in for a rainy day. They were watching the interest going in, thinking their money was safe in the bank. But, after 36 months, that money was now going to get paid directly into consolidated revenue to prop up this government's accounts and its reckless spending. What legitimacy was there for this three-year period? What was the legitimate reason to reduce the period from seven years when many other countries have a period of 15 years before money is deemed as unclaimed? What was the legitimacy to reduce it to three years? There was simply none.

And what about the effects on the psychology of Australians, who think when they put their money into a bank account that that money is safe, if they find out that 36 months later that money has been withdrawn by the government? What was to happen with this money that was being transferred? The other part of the plot was that, come 30 June, the end of this financial year, when accounts were reeled off, this government would be able to have over $100 million of money that would otherwise have been deposited in the accounts of mums, dads, pensioners and kids, transferring it into consolidated revenue so they could say, 'Hey presto, we have delivered a surplus.'

That was the plan; but, like everything this government touches, it simply ended in tears. Despite this raid on bank accounts, the surplus, like a distant mirage, has simply vanished. The surplus that we were promised is now, at the latest forecast, a $19.8 billion deficit. You can bet London to a brick on that, when that final number is revealed—coincidentally after the election date—it will be somewhere north of $20 billion.

When the government introduced this legislation they simply failed to listen to the warnings of the experts in the banking sector who had to apply and actually do this work. When the bill was being debated in parliament the banking industry clearly warned about the dangers of the short time frame from the announcement of the policy to the implementation on 31 December. The Australian Bankers' Association noted:

The ABA notes that the proposed timing for implementation and a commencement of 31 December 2012 is unrealistic, being in less than 2 months and falling during a period when banks implement freezes on any technology or IT systems changes. It is estimated that banks and other ADIs will require at least 6 months to make all the necessary changes, inform customers in a legally compliant manner, and meet compliance requirements. It should be noted that individual banks and other ADIs will have different implementation issues. Therefore, the ABA believes that a 12 month transitional period for compliance is appropriate to ensure the legal, technical and practical issues can be addressed and ensure that the new regime can be streamlined into the existing annual process without disrupting banks' systems or bank-customer relationships.

That advice from the banking association was simply ignored because this government wanted to get their hands on that cash. They wanted to raid the bank accounts of Australians, so they completely ignored that mess. Now we have this confusion and chaos, a simple trademark of this government. Even when the legislation was brought in, the originating bill simply had seven amendments.

After this law was passed Labor gave the banks four months—from 31 December 2012 to 30 April this year—where they had to deliver a statement of any money in any bank account in the nation that had not had a deposit or withdrawal even as little as 5c. They had to give a statement of those accounts and they had to pay the money to the Commonwealth to put into this year's budget. What an example of dysfunction. This raid was expected to net this government over $100 million to put into this year's budget to try to deliver that surplus which we have never had.

What did the government do? What about an information campaign? What about an advertising campaign to let people know that the Labor government are coming for their money and, if they had an account which they had only had in there for close to three years, to rush and put a dollar in or take a dollar out? We have seen advertising campaigns for a whole host of other things from this government, but no—deadly silence.

So we had people who thought they had nest eggs stashed away. They were in for a very nasty surprise. Here are a few examples of this government plundering money from people's private bank accounts, taken without their knowledge or consent. On 22 May a 77-year-old pensioner, Mr Alan Duffy, arrived home after spending 21 days in hospital following a heart bypass and found that the $22,616 he had saved over 14 years and put away for that medical emergency had been seized by this government. I call it stealing.

On 25 May young Seamus Hadfield, aged five, and his little brother Eamon, aged three, found that $3,000—money their grandparents had given to them when they were born to put away for when they were older to help pay for their education—had been raided by this Gillard Labor government. Their parents said at the time: 'We were pretty shocked. Who expects to see their kids' accounts closed and the money taken by the government?' Well, Mrs Hadfield, welcome to the workings of the Labor government in Australia in 2013.

On 1 July a 47-year-old mother of two, Margaret Frankln, found out $157,644 had been cleaned out of her bank account to be used to prop up this government's finances for the year. Mrs Frankln said she was 'shocked and angry beyond belief' when she found her money—$157,000—had been siphoned from her account, leaving her with a zero balance, and that the money had been used to prop up this government's finances. These are just a few examples of the thousands and thousands of Australians who are finding this has happened to them.

Although these citizens can get their money back, they have to apply for it, and they do not get their money back until next financial year, enabling this government to have that money in their account come 30 July. This is a tragic example of the flaws and dangers of this government. The coalition supports this amendment bill, which fixes up some of the mistakes.

We need to inform every citizen in this nation that, under this Labor government, if you have saved and put money away—it may be grandparents who have put money away for their grandkids, it may be a pensioner who has put money away in case of a medical emergency, it may be someone who has put money away for a rainy day—and you have not made a deposit or withdrawal on those accounts in the last 36 months, that money will now be taken by this government. We should be having an advertising campaign. People need to be aware of this. All citizens of Australia need to watch out: their money is no longer safe in their bank accounts when this Labor government is around. 14 September cannot come quickly enough.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to follow the very eloquent contribution by my friend and colleague the member for Hughes, who spoke with such passion on the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013. It is important to point out this evening, in this place, the context around the bill that has been presented to the parliament. It is important to point out the context because it says everything you need to know about the government, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister.

For those who are not aware, late last year the government decided to make a change to unclaimed moneys. The government decided to make this change after the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook Statement in order to prop up its budget bottom line. The government was claiming, even at that point, that it was going to be delivering just over a $1 billion surplus this coming budget. They had downgraded that forecast from $1.5 billion, but said that they would be able to get just over $1 billion. It is important to understand this because the government has made much of what they call their 'economic competence'—the Treasurer goes on and on about it; in fact, he rather likes the description of 'world's greatest Treasurer'—but when you examine the facts, nothing could be further from the truth.

We have seen a complete reversal in the fiscal position from the previous coalition government to the current government. The current government inherited $70 billion in net assets in the Future Fund and a $20 billion surplus with no net debt. We had repaid $96 billion of Labor's debt and we were paying no interest bill because we had no borrowings. Under the current Treasurer, the situation has been radically reversed. In each budget he delivered a deficit, and it is now adding up to more than $192 billion. We have most recently seen a net debt of more than $150 billion, and we are told that, before the end of this year, we could well see the gross debt ceiling of $300 billion broken. This is after the government had already increased the ceiling from $75 billion. It increased it another four times up to $300 billion and said it would never get past that point. The government is now paying an interest bill of around $8 billion each year, which is almost enough to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The reason I say this is that the government maintained that it was going to get back to surplus. In fact, it promised it more than 500 times. The Assistant Treasurer was very embarrassed, because he had put out a piece of paper to his electorate saying that they had delivered a surplus—and the current Treasurer, in the previous budget, also made a similar claim. When they realised that it was going to be very difficult to deliver a surplus because they had not reigned in a lot of the wasteful and reckless spending that they had been conducting, they realised that they needed to find a new source of funds, and what better source of funds than the Australian people yet again. This is a government that has no respect for the Australian people, and it demonstrated that by bringing forward the unclaimed moneys bill last year. The unclaimed moneys bill allowed the government to appropriate just under $1 billion over four years—$900 million, about the same amount that they said would be the surplus. It was a desperate attempt to shore up the budget bottom line. How did they set about doing this? They set about raiding money from bank accounts, from life insurance, from superannuation and from corporations.

The key changes were these: in bank accounts, moneys were deemed to be unclaimed if no money went into or out of the account within a three-year period—it was previously seven years, but they dropped that to three years—and interest did not count as activity. At this point, the money was directly appropriated by the government to go into consolidated revenue. With life insurance, money was previously treated as unclaimed after seven years but that has now been reduced to three years.

Like with bank accounts, with life insurance moneys there is no limit. The government could not just take out $500, $2,000 or even $500,000

There is no limit to what the government can appropriate. If you had $2 million sitting in your account and you had not touched it for three years for whatever reason, the government could raid the lot. Superannuation accounts with balances of less than $2,000 could be appropriated if there had been no activity for 12 months and, if there was no identifiable member of a superannuation account, the time period was reduced from five years to 12 months before the money was transferred to the ATO. Finally, unclaimed property of corporations was to be recognised directly as a result of this change in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, propping up the budget bottom line, upon receipt by ASIC, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, instead of being put separately in the companies and unclaimed money special account.

Why is this meaningful? It is meaningful for several reasons. It is meaningful because it goes to Australians who are doing the right thing, saving money not only for their future but also for the future of their families. Through no fault of their own, through no wrong doing, government seeks to come in and claim the money for the most tawdry of political reasons—that is to prop up its budget to disguise its fiscal incompetence.

Let me just give you a couple of scenarios as to how this money can raided by the government. Imagine the birth of a new child into a family. The parents or grandparents may decide to give that child a great start in life by putting some money aside perhaps to be given to them on their 21st birthday or to save up for their future education expenses. It may well be that there is no money put into that account for a period of three years. Under this legislation and under the legislation previously passed by the government, that money can be directly appropriated by the government. This is quite wrong.

Let me give you another example of a young couple saving up for their mortgage, wanting to purchase their first home. They may have put money aside separate from their normal day-to-day accounts so that it would not be touched and not drawn down. They may have had different periods throughout their lives where they have been able to make contributions to that savings account. Again, if it is untouched for three years the government can take the money.

We might have an example of an elderly couple where one member of that couple needs to go into an aged-care facility. They sell the family home and invest some of that money into an account to provide for the care of both—one in the aged-care facility and the other perhaps in a smaller unit or in a family member's home. Again, if the money is not touched for three years, they may wake up to find on the day that they really need that money it has gone. It is no longer there.

Recently I was contacted by a very concerned parent who was notified by his son he no longer had any savings in his savings account. This is quite remarkable. This very concerned parent called me up and said, 'My son who has been working overseas in London for four years, and who had put some money aside as part of his savings and was going to be coming back to Australia in November of this year, checked his account only to find all of the money gone.' After making some inquiries, he realised this was as a result of the unclaimed moneys bill and set about trying to recover the money.

It is not easy to recover money. Firstly, this parent who has power of attorney for his young adult child trying to make a go of it overseas has had to provide passport information and a drivers licence. He has had to fill in quite a number of forms. He has had to not only prove his power of attorney but also get evidence of the fact that the power of attorney has not been revoked. In fact, it has been too difficult for this very educated man and his son to get the money back and so much so that his son is not going to bother to recover these funds until he comes back in November. This is indeed a great shame. There are multiple examples of offset accounts that could be appropriated by the government. In fact, there are so many examples that they are too numerous to mention.

What I want to come to now is exactly why there is another bill before the House in order to make further amendments to the original unclaimed moneys bill. This bill has been brought forward because the government in its haste to get its hands on people's money pushed the bill through the parliament in a record amount of time with as little scrutiny as it possibly could have. As a result, this bill is riddled with errors. Some of the amendments that are being made here in this bill today include the fact that there is now no minimum amount that can be transferred out as part of the unclaimed moneys bill. There is no longer a $100 limit before the money can be transferred. No, the government wants to take it all. It does not matter if it is less than $100, the Labor government still wants to get its hands on your money.

We have also had the ridiculous situation where an account may have activity but, if an assessment has already been made, the banks—the authorised deposit institutions—have to make an assessment as to whether or not there has been activity. They are forced under the previous legislation to transfer that money through to the government, irrespective of the fact that there may well be activity after this date. This is a travesty. At least this bill before the parliament now will correct that; it will stop that transfer. It will also make amendment to the refunds that authorised deposit institutions require as a result of keeping accounts open when in fact they have transferred the money through to the government. It rectifies this great injustice as well.

This government has been reckless with the finances of our nation, and it is the Australian people who have paid the price for that. Children, young people, elderly people—it does not discriminate. It is prepared to take anyone's money. You simply ask yourself the question: why? One can only say that the culture that is across the aisle here—and we have heard of members of unions using funds for their own purposes—has infected this parliament and that the Labor Party thinks it is within its rights to be able to utilise the money of ordinary Australian taxpayers—and it is wrong. (Time expired)

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we have just heard from the member for Higgins, as well as from the member for Moncrieff and the member for Casey, it is becoming an unfortunate habit for people on this side of the House to have to clean up another mess of this government, but more particularly to clean up another mess of this Treasurer. The member for Moncrieff was right to highlight this Treasurer's appalling track record.

Mr Randall interjecting—

Yes, I take the member for Canning's interjection, that the member for Lilley is supposedly the world's greatest Treasurer. But one thing he will be remembered for is his consistency. As the member for Moncrieff pointed out, the Treasurer has been consistently about $20 billion wrong in every budget he has delivered. What is $20 billion between friends? Well when it comes to the Australian people, $20 billion amounts to about $192 billion worth of deficits. We have had year upon year of deficits from a Treasurer who claims to be in a position to deliver a surplus. And oh how he must hate former Treasurer Peter Costello; how he must hate that guy with his year after year of surpluses. What would the member for Lilley, the current Treasurer, give for just one surplus, just one? How he would love to be able to get out a black pen for once rather than continuously finding himself surrounded in red ink. But, alas, this Treasurer has put us into a position as a nation where we face an enormous deficit and a crisis of confidence in the community that I believe will be up to the coalition to repair come September this year if we are blessed with the vote of the Australian people.

Today's amendment had its genesis in this Treasurer's desperation, in his determination to secure just one surplus. We had this desperate Treasurer making desperate moves to try to prop up his already failing reputation and try to achieve that surplus. That was the one, that was the surplus that the Treasurer promised and the Prime Minister promised to the Australian people hundreds and hundreds of times. He promised it time and time again. In fact, he started his budget speech in 2012 by telling us the years of budget surpluses were upon us. That was his gold-plated guarantee to the Australian people, that he would deliver a surplus in 2012-13. But in this indecent rush to secure that surplus, he mucked it all up. That is why we are here today trying to clean up the mess, as the member for Moncrieff and others quite rightly pointed out and highlighted in their addresses tonight. As the member for Casey also mentioned in his comments to the House, there has not been one blush, not one hint of apology, not one request for forgiveness from this Treasurer.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member has got a bill before him and I ask the honourable member to speak to the bill. It is—

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It is a very tight bill and I ask the member to come back to the bill.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker.

Mr Randall interjecting—

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Did the honourable member just reflect on the chair?

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I said the Treasurer should be embarrassed by what he has done.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask the honourable member to stay out of the debate. He has not got the call.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, and I take your point that the bill before House does seek to amend this government's own policy, which was introduced late last year. It was a policy position that was motivated by the Treasurer's desire to achieve a surplus because the basis of this whole piece of legislation was to try to secure an improvement to the budget bottom line for the Treasurer. What we have seen, in the indecent haste, is a mess that now the House is seeking to clean up through the amendment. All of this would not have been necessary if only this Treasurer had the capacity to live within his own means and to live within the means of the government and deliver value for money to the Australian taxpayers.

In this search for every dollar that we saw at the end of the last calendar year, the government announced that it would shorten the time period before money could be considered to be lost or unclaimed. In bank accounts, for example, that time period would be reduced from seven years to three years; for life insurance, likewise: it was going to be cut from seven years to three years. For superannuation accounts, the inactivity period was slashed from five years to 12 months, after which superannuation accounts of unidentifiable members would be transferred to the Australian tax office. And superannuation accounts with balances of less than $2,000 and accounts of unidentifiable members inactive for 12 months were required to be transferred to the Commissioner of Taxation. Also, unclaimed property of corporations was to be counted as part of the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund upon receipt by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, not the companies and unclaimed moneys special account. But it was quite a bonus for the underlying cash position of the Commonwealth and hence the efforts by this Treasurer where the government were hopeful that these measures would net the government nearly $900 million over the four-year period to 2015-16.

As you may be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, the government-controlled Senate economics committee inquiry was held into this bill and recommended that the government bill be passed but the coalition members on that Senate committee inquiry gave a dissenting report. What we are left with today is, as I referred to earlier, an effort by the House to clean up the government's own errors in the drafting of the legislation as to what we regard as a poor policy measure. The government has failed in its duty of responsibility to the Australian people to manage the economy in a way which delivers good value for money and also in a way which builds trust with the Australian people. We have ourselves in this situation due to the Treasurer's ineptitude, and I feel that come 14 September this year the Australian people will judge this government and this Treasurer very harshly not only on this measure but also on other measures.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013. I want to reiterate what the members for Higgins, Moncrieff and Gippsland have just said: that we are in this terrible situation of having to come into this House to clean up a bill because the 'world's greatest Treasurer'—and he was 'presented' a plaque at the campaign launch of my opposition the other day with the 'world's greatest Treasurer' on it—has had in the recent budget a $20 billion blow-out. So we have now got to find the money from somewhere. So what do we do? We go looking at ways by which we can get the money back and we go looking at people's bank accounts. This bill exempts reactivated accounts from being reported and transferred to the Commonwealth as unclaimed moneys and allows the Commonwealth to provide refunds to authorised deposit-taking institutions, or ADIs, if moneys are collected unnecessarily.

In the 2012-13 MYEFO, in an attempt by the government to find savings to bolster their now-defunct commitment of delivering a surplus in 2012-13, the government announced an array of changes relating to unclaimed moneys in bank accounts, life insurance accounts, superannuation accounts and corporations. These changes sought to bring forward the period of time at which money is recognised under the relevant law as being lost or unclaimed. These changes can be referred to as Labor's desperate cash grab—and that is all it is, a very desperate cash grab—where the Gillard government seeks to ambush by stealth the newly classified unclaimed moneys in savings accounts, life insurance accounts, superannuation accounts and corporations. As with every piece of shambolic legislation that is put forward by this government, the devil is in the detail and with these changes the devil is in the new period for accounts to be treated as unclaimed moneys, which this fiscally challenged government has significantly shortened. Since the government has been trying this week to claim that it is committed to dealing in facts, here are the facts about this blatant cash grab—and I repeat that that is all it is, a cash grab—and the changes it has made so that it could raid these accounts.

If you have a bank account, it is now reduced from seven years to three years. If you have life insurance moneys, they were previously treated as unclaimed after seven years but that has been reduced to three years. Superannuation accounts with balances of less than $2,000 and accounts of unidentifiable members that have been inactive for 12 months were required to be transferred to the Commissioner of Taxation. The changes reduce from five years to 12 months the period of inactivity before which the superannuation accounts of unidentifiable members are transferred to the ATO. The unclaimed property of corporations is now to be recognised directly in the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund—impacting the underlying cash position of the Commonwealth—upon receipt by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, as opposed to the companies and unclaimed moneys special account. These measures have netted the government nearly $900 million over a four-year period to 2015-16.

A government controlled Senate economics committee inquiry was held into this bill and recommended that the government bill be passed. The coalition members of the committee inquiry gave a dissenting report. The coalition series of amendments sought to delay implementation of schedules 1 and 2, relating to bank accounts and first home saver accounts, for a full year to commence on 31 December 2013 to feed into the banks' annual processes that had largely been completed for this calendar year when the MYEFO announcements were made. The coalition sought to delay schedule 4 relating to superannuation accounts for a full year in order to align with the deadline of the autoconsolidations necessary under the previously announced SuperStream reforms, which are due to commence from 1 January 2014. The purpose of the coalition amendments was to allow the banking and finance sectors to put in place proper governance processes for the implementation of these changed time periods—and I have got to say that the amount of regulation that has been put on the banking and other sectors has just been absolutely incredible.

But, no, this government was not interested in the interests of ordinary Australians and ensuring that their savings accounts were not ambushed. So desperate have the government been, because of their woeful mismanagement of their budget, that they have just wanted to grab the cash of ordinary Australians as quickly as they could in a vain attempt to prop up the ever-growing debt that they have racked up year after year. The coalition amendments were defeated on the floor of the House of Representatives and the coalition voted against the passage of this bill in both the House of Representative and the Senate.

How repugnant is it to steal someone's money from their bank account, and I want to go through a few examples of that. A particularly disgusting example was hijacking a bank account in the case of Adrian Duffy, a Brisbane pensioner, who emerged from a quintuple heart bypass—if going in for a quintuple heart bypass isn't stressful enough—only to find his wife's $20,000 Suncorp account empty because the bank gave it to the government.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is lucky he didn't have a relapse.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Canning is quite right: he is lucky he didn't have a relapse. It could have brought on another heart attack. Mr Duffy is now looking at a very lengthy battle to have his savings restored. He is a 75-year-old. He doesn't need this stress. He already spent 21 days in hospital following the quintuple heart bypass and a second operation in April. He does not need the stress of having now to sort out his banking details. When Mr Duffy and his wife went back to check their Suncorp account, they discovered their balance had plummeted. Can you imagine! You go to your bank account and check out the balance. You remember that you had $22,616 and you find you have a zero balance. A note on the 1 May entry had the quite ominous message 'Closing WDL Govt unclaimed monies'.

This couple—this is quite sad—had saved for 40 years in preparation for a major health related costs just to have a cash-strapped and broke Gillard government rip it out of their bank account right under their very noses. Mr Duffy and his wife are now working to recover the money, but they say they are quite lucky to have had a little bit of other savings that they can draw on. As Mr Duffy said to the media about the traumatic event:

If we didn't have the money elsewhere, we would now have to be paying for cardiologists, visits to surgeons, ECGs, x-rays, whatever is involved in the follow-up.

I know how expensive operations are. Many of my constituents come to see me every day about the extras that they have to pay after their health insurance.

Not all those who fall victim to this cash grab by the Gillard government can be so lucky. I had a case recently in which a lady came to my office. She had gone overseas for eight weeks only to discover upon her return that the Gillard government had ripped approximately $30,000 out of her ING Direct savings account. It had been sucked dry. Imagine that! Every person who goes overseas right now must have the fear of God in them that, if they haven't done anything about an account, while they are overseas they can have that money ripped out of their bank account. The lady contacted the ASIC call centre and was advised that:

They are still working through the detail of the legislation. You won't be able to see how much they actually took until July 1 and the money won't be returned until 10 weeks after that.

There are many examples that come to mind. Will they be returned with interest? Ten weeks! What if you needed that money desperately? There are many examples of people who have money that is left in accounts. We have always been encouraged by governments of all persuasions to save, and many Australians have money in fixed accounts. I will give you the example of someone who has left money in a will. A small amount is left in an account; they leave it in there. That is the sort of money that can be ripped out of their account.

A few months ago I had a charitable church group come to see me. They are a conglomeration of groups of churches—they buy equipment, they buy teaching aids. The bank account had not been active for some time and they were advised that if they did not make a transaction soon that money would be ripped out of their account. The secretary of this church organisation was outraged. She said to me: 'Teresa, do I have to put $10 in the bank account only to take it out so that we can have some sort of transaction? That is absolutely outrageous. I have sent them an email and I have told them that it is a legitimate account, but to no avail.'

So you have church groups, charitable organisations, individuals, young people and old people. This bill does not discriminate. It takes money out of people's bank accounts. It rips it out of your account if you are overseas or you have gone to have an operation, as I have just demonstrated with Mr Duffy. More than understandably, this lady that I just spoken about who was told she would have her money returned after 10 weeks was not particularly happy. She wants her money now. It is her money.

It is not just everyday Australians who think these changes are absurd. Even the Australian Bankers' Association has accused the government of putting its own financial circumstances ahead of customers' needs, leaving them facing 'months of delays trying to reclaim their own money'. They have to show all sorts of identification to get their money back. It is just the most incredibly convoluted process—to get back their own money! It is extraordinary.

More specifically, the acting chief executive of the Australian Bankers' Association has said that he believed there was 'no benefit for customers from these changes'. I remember sitting opposite with the parliamentary secretary and commenting to him when the bill was introduced that this was just an effort by the Gillard government to steal people's money. He said, 'No, no, no, Teresa; it is about reuniting people with their super quicker.' There is nothing about reuniting people with their super quicker here; it is about taking people's money. It is a blatant, blatant cash grab.

The issues which this bill seeks to amend are a direct result of the government's own errors in drafting the legislation for this very, very poor piece of policy. It is poor policy. They decide to do something and they worry about the details later. They worry about the details later when hundreds of thousands of people have been hurt by the decisions that they have made.

In the transitional arrangements, ADIs are expected to assess the moneys at an appropriate date and transfer them to the Commonwealth by the due date. Under the existing legislation, ADIs are required to report and transfer all unclaimed moneys as assessed on the applicable assessment date, including reactivated accounts, to the Commonwealth, regardless of whether transactions have been made on the accounts prior to the reporting date. Consequently, these ADIs would either commit an offence of not transferring all unclaimed money to the Commonwealth or need to close the reactivated accounts and transfer them to the Commonwealth.

On the other hand, some ADIs have reported and transferred the unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth, including the amounts for reactivated accounts. However, rather than closing and transferring the reactivated accounts, ADIs kept the reactivated accounts active and retained the balance amount but paid the required unclaimed accounts from their own accounts

Sounds complicated? You bet it is.

The Commonwealth does not currently have power to refund moneys to ADIs directly though ADIs are the intermediary returning unclaimed moneys to their owners.

These measures within this bill seek to allow 'ADIs to exclude accounts that have transactions after being assessed as unclaimed from unclaimed moneys which need to be reported and transferred to the Commonwealth'. The bill seeks to allow 'the Treasurer to refund moneys to ADIs that are collected unnecessarily'. Well, that's a revelation, isn't it?

While the coalition did not support the passage of the original legislation through the parliament, this amendment bill should be passed, as it was made necessary by the government's incompetence and the urgent need to amend their own very poor and shabby policy. The other notable display of incompetence from the government is in the drafting of the bill that relates to the government's claims as to financial impact. The explanatory memorandum to the bill states:

The financial impact from the Bill is likely to be low but is difficult to quantify due to insufficient data being available.

Given that the Commonwealth is effectively reimbursing those ADIs who have been kind enough to use their own funds to fulfil the government requirements in relation to the unclaimed amounts, there may be a future cost to the national budget for the interest paid to ADIs in recompense. This kind of legislation has become commonplace—bad legislation and a bad policy outcome from the Gillard government.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak this evening on the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013. The purpose of this bill is to make certain amendments to the Banking Act 1959. The reason that this bill is necessary is an earlier, extremely ill-judged, badly designed and sloppily implemented set of measures introduced by the Rudd-Gillard government. Under the legislation as it stands today, authorised deposit-taking institutions, or ADIs, are required to report and hand across to the government all unclaimed moneys based upon the status of an account as at an assessment date. As I will come to speak about later, as a consequence of changes made by the Rudd-Gillard government some time ago, the point at which the long arm of government extends into the bank accounts of Australians has been brought forward so that it now occurs within an unreasonably short time. As a result of these arrangements now being in place, it has emerged that there are some serious technical and operational flaws in the legislation that currently applies.

The first of those, as I have mentioned, is that authorised deposit-taking institutions are required to report and hand across all unclaimed moneys, and the status of an account is determined at a particular assessment date—that is, at that date the authorised deposit-taking institution is required to determine whether it is an account which contains unclaimed moneys. But this is where it gets really curious. As the law presently stands—this ill-judged, badly drafted, rushed, poorly implemented, poorly thought-through piece of legislation which has now been in place for some time—in circumstances where, as at the assessment date, the account satisfies the definition of containing unclaimed moneys, even if subsequent to that date a transaction occurs on the account, the ADI is under a legal obligation to collect the moneys in that account and to hand them to the Commonwealth. That obligation exists once the status has been determined as at the assessment date even if, as I say, after that date the account holder transacts on the account. That is clearly a nonsensical and illogical result and it reflects poor drafting and poor implementation by a chaotically disorganised government that was so desperate in its grab for cash that it did not take the time to think through the implications of how the legislation was drafted.

The consequence of the provisions operating as they do in the way that I have explained is that authorised deposit-taking institutions are placed in a remarkably invidious position in circumstances where the assessment date has arrived, as at the assessment date the account satisfies the definition such that the moneys within it are considered to be unclaimed moneys, and subsequent to that date but before the ADI hands the money across to the Commonwealth there is a transaction on that account. In those circumstances, the ADI is in an invidious position because it faces a choice between two unsatisfactory alternatives: either it must commit an offence of not transferring all unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth or it must close the account—even though, to the certain knowledge of the ADI, that account has in fact been reactivated and the moneys in it therefore are not in substance unclaimed moneys—and transfer the contents of the account to the Commonwealth. This is a choice between two equally unattractive options. At this point I want to particularly acknowledge my year 8 English teacher, Mr Cody, who repeatedly informed his year 8 English class that the true definition of 'dilemma' is a choice between two equally unattractive options. ADIs, in the circumstances I have described, face a true dilemma. Mr Cody, who was a stickler for the definition of 'dilemma', would absolutely agree that the circumstances I have described present ADIs with a dilemma.

How have ADIs chosen to deal with this dilemma? In some circumstances, some ADIs have chosen to keep the reactivated account active, to retain the customer's balance in the account and then to pay the amount which by law is required to go to the Commonwealth from the ADI's own funds. That is clearly an undesirable state of affairs from the point of view of an ADI, and it creates this particular further problem: the Commonwealth, under the law as presently drafted, does not, in the circumstances I have described, have the legal power to return the money which has been paid to the ADI. That is so, because the way the legislation has been drafted does not contemplate the scenario I have just described in which the ADI makes payment to the Commonwealth; it assumes the payment always comes directly out of the account holder's account.

That is the backdrop against which the House is considering the bill which is before us this evening. The bill contains provisions which would, firstly, allow ADIs to exclude accounts from being treated as containing unclaimed moneys in circumstances where, as at the assessment date, they met the test. That is to say there had been no transactions on the account for the specified period of time, but subsequent to the assessment date there had then been at least one transaction. That is the first measure relevantly within the bill.

The second measure would allow the Commonwealth, in the circumstances I have described, to repay the amounts that had been paid to the Commonwealth and to repay those amounts not to the account holder but to the ADI, where it is the ADI that has paid out of its own funds to the Commonwealth.

The coalition is of the view that these amendments are necessary to correct patent, glaring and obvious errors in the poorly drafted act, which is presently on the statute books, by reason of this government's ill-judged and chaotic grab for cash.

I want to make three of brief points. Firstly, the whole reason this bill is necessary and the whole reason that there is an issue to be addressed is that the Rudd-Gillard government has made a desperate grab for cash in the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Unclaimed Money and Other Measures) Act, an act which has been on the statute books for sometime now. Secondly, the poor drafting of that act has given rise to an unnecessary burden and extraordinary difficulties for ADIs. Thirdly, I make the point that it is unacceptable that, yet again, this parliament is spending valuable time fixing mistakes in legislation which should not have been made and which were made as a consequence of this government's rushed chaotic approach to introducing and passing legislation.

I turn to the proposition that the underlying issue this bill addresses arises as a result of the government's desperate and unseemly grab for cash. Legislation was introduced following a measure included in the 2012-13 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The effect of that legislation, which, as I have indicated, has been passed into law for sometime now, is that the time periods before which a bank account can be treated as unclaimed moneys has been shortened from seven years to three years. There have also been changes regarding life insurance and superannuation accounts. This was a desperate grab for cash which will net the government nearly $900 million over the four-year period to 2015-16, but the ethics of this approach are highly questionable. It calls to mind the image of a desperate parent who has so mismanaged the household finances that he or she is reduced to breaking open their child's bank account to scrabble for some coins to try to deal with the chaotic situation of the family budget.

As other speakers from the coalition have articulately pointed out this evening, there has been a storm of community protest about these extraordinary provisions. I quote from a constituent:

I am writing to inform you that today I went to my bank account to complete a transaction where I was informed my account had been closed and my money had been sent to the government.

As my member of parliament, I would like you to ask the government why it believes it has the right take my money from my account just because I haven't transacted during a certain period.

The bank is the only safe place I have to keep my money—money that I wish to keep for a time when I decide I need it. I needed money today. I had money in my account, yet, when I went to get it, I learned the government had taken it.

Another comment I have received from a constituent in West Pymble states:

I am just writing to say that I am appalled at the Labor Party's grab on inactive accounts after 12 months. My four children have a small super fund and a savings account in that super fund which holds a small balance under $1,000.

There has been no activity in this account for 12 months, and now the government has absconded with their funds and we are faced with what will undoubtedly be an administrative nightmare just to get our own money returned to us. This is a hassle we do not need and bitterly resent.

It is bad enough paying thousands in taxes every year without the government stealing money from our bank accounts. We understand the principles behind remitting funds in inactive accounts to a government agency and have no argument with the basic objectives, but the new 12-month rule is just a nightmare and an extremely inconvenient government intrusion into our personal affairs for no useful purpose.

We feel we have been mugged and our money stolen. It is an absolute disgrace.

I think my two constituents, who I have quoted, have put this matter very well.

The second point I put this evening is that authorised deposit-taking institutions have been put into a very difficult position in needing to comply with this legislation. For example, the Australian Bankers' Association had this to say:

The ABA believes there is no benefit for consumers from the changes. The banking industry did not support the changes to the law.

Since the new law has been introduced, the ABA has been working with the Treasury to address unintended consequences and to ensure necessary technical amendments are made.

Banks must comply with these new laws. Banks have faced legal and technical issues trying to implement a new unclaimed monies regime without sufficient time or adequate rules to support the implementation of the new regime.

Isn't that just the constant chorus from every stakeholder dealing with this government: 'without sufficient time' and 'without adequate rules to support the implementation'?

In the brief time remaining I want to turn to my third point, which is that the whole reason this bill is necessary tonight is to correct grave and gaping errors in the act that presently sits on the statute book and which was passed into law only quite recently. This occurred because the government rushed it through. When the bill was before the House we urged the government to slow down and we urged it to take time to address the issues carefully, rather than rushing the bill through in a disorderly and chaotic way. Of course, yet again, the hopelessly chaotic, disorganised and unprofessional Rudd-Gillard government failed to accept that advice. As a result, they have created an extraordinary mess and it has now been necessary to pass this additional piece of legislation to correct the mess. This bill makes necessary changes, but to a very bad underlying piece of legislation.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Jack Donahue, Frank Gardiner, Johnny Gilbert, Ben Hall, Ned Kelly, Dan Morgan, Andrew George Scott—alias Captain Moonlite—and Frederick Ward—alias Captain Thunderbolt—all names from the 19th century and all bushrangers. They stole from other colonial Australians to feather their own nests. And we thought that they belonged back in the 1800s but, alas, the bushrangers ride again. They are on that side of the House, and now they are coming to a bank account near you.

This Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013 is seeing yet another raft of bushrangers coming to a bank account near you. It could be anyone's bank account. If it has not been active in the last three years then look out! Certainly, there has been a chorus of complaint right across this wide brown land about the 21st century bushrangers who are just waiting to take unclaimed money. This is, after all, theft by any other name.

I am going to quote from the Hervey Bay Independent

Mr Neumann interjecting—

Pardon? I am sorry: the parliamentary secretary at the table is saying something I cannot hear, but I will allow his interjection. What was that?

Mr Neumann interjecting—

No, it is theft, and you know it is theft! The member at the table knows that it is theft. The member for Blair probably has examples in his own electorate: people who have had their bank accounts raided by this Labor government. He has some explaining to do when they ring his office and say: 'Mr Neumann, why are my bank accounts being taken by your government in the dead of night? It's not fair.' He knows it is not fair, his colleagues know it is not fair and we on this side certainly know it is unfair.

I was going to quote from the Hervey Bay Independent of 31 May:

The family of a 95-year-old Hervey Bay pensioner who had $50,000 forfeited from a bank account because it hadn't been used for seven years is warning others to be aware of the laws.

Craignish resident Jan Powell said she was shocked last week when she went to check on the status of an account her mother opened in 2002, established to pay—

wait for it—

her own funeral costs, and found the balance had gone from $49,000—

to what? What do you think it was?

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Zero!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely zero! You are right—you are so correct, member for Forde. It was absolutely zero. Mrs Powell said:

I contacted the bank and after being shuffled around I was told that it was Federal Government law that if an account had been inactive for seven years the money was forfeited to the government …

I can just imagine what people are feeling now these bank accounts have been reduced to a three-year period. I continue to quote Mrs Powell:

I was furious and asked why my mother wasn't contacted and told it would be taken. She has another account with the ANZ Bank that she has her pension put into—so it couldn't have been too hard to track her down.

This account was opened in 2002 after her husband died and she saw the strain the funeral costs put on the family so she wanted to save for her own funeral so this wouldn't happen again.

Under Australia law cheque or savings accounts that have been inactive for more than seven years are forfeited to the crown.

We have known that, but now it is down to three years.

Banks must, by March 31 each year—

A government member interjecting—

Stop interjecting and listen; you might learn something:

… deliver to the Treasurer a register of all unclaimed accounts worth $500 or more, which is then published in the Government Gazette.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission reports Queenslanders' pool of unclaimed money from dormant accounts is now more than $71 million.

This actual bill is going to mean that there could be a boost to the budget bottom line of almost $900 million—that is nearly $1 billion under a plan to transfer millions in unclaimed money to the taxman and the corporate regulator.

And who is putting this in place? Is it Ned Kelly? Is it Johnny Gilbert? Is it Ben Hall? No—it is the Treasurer! It is the Prime Minister! It is this government, who are 21st century bushrangers coming to a bank account near you—probably your bank account. The government is going to collect an extra $675 million—and I am quoting from the National Times of 22 October 2012:

In a measure announced yesterday, the government will collect an extra $675 million by lowering the threshold at which lost superannuation accounts are automatically moved to the Australian Tax Office.

But why is this necessary?

We all know it is necessary—well, not really 'necessary'; that is probably not quite the correct word to use—that it is happening because this government cannot manage its own finances. It will do anything and it will stop at nothing to balance its books, even if that means taking money out of people's bank accounts where they have saved for their own funerals. Even if it means taking some of those children's Dollarmite accounts that have been inactive for three years and even if it means—as in some examples from near my electorate down in the Riverina—taking the money from people's farm management accounts. Those people have put their money in and they expect it to be there. They have had a hard enough time in recent years with drought, with floods, with fires, with poor water policy from the government. Now they have the 21st century Ned Kellys coming along and taking their hard-earned money. It is outrageous. It is simply unbelievable. But this is the Labor government of 2013. Ben Hall rides again! Never mind the Eugowra Rocks gold robbery, the stagecoach hold-up; this is classic bushranging in the 21st century. People are having their hard-earned money taken from them just to help balance the Treasurer's books. It is just incredible.

I refer to a website, Simplifying Your Life Choices, and a comment piece by Rachel Tyler Jones. On 27 February this year in an opinion piece called 'The dummies guide to losing an election', she wrote:

I'm no politician, but even I know that taking people's money is a stupid way to win an election. The Government did not consult the Australian Bankers Association … about the new three-year time limit—the figure appears to be an arbitrary one. Even as a Labor supporter—

Her words, not mine. I am certainly no Labor supporter. Rachel Tyler Jones further wrote:

Even as a Labor supporter, I am struggling to see this as anything but a desperate grab for money by a government that can't live up to its (retracted) budget surplus promises.

We have just heard the member for Bradfield describing this as ill-judged, chaotic, desperate, unseemly and an ethically questionable grab for cash. He talked about the extraordinary provisions that this government has gone to to raid what in some cases are people's life savings, to raid what some people have put away to pay for their own funerals, to raid farm bank accounts and to raid kids' Dollarmite savings accounts. It is truly extraordinary.

On the website freedomwatch.IPA.org.au of the Institute of Public Affairs, Simon Breheny writes:

The Gillard government's plan to take money from dormant bank accounts is a shameful grab for cash and a significant attack on property rights.

He is the Director of the Legal Rights Project at the Institute of Public Affairs, a free-market think tank. What he has said here is what people right across Australia are saying, right at this very minute. They are not just coalition supporters, they are Labor supporters—they are once rusted on ALP voters, unionists who have also had their bank accounts raided by these modern-day Captain Moonlites and Captain Thunderbolts. They are not riding in on their horse or holding up a stagecoach or jumping through your window in the dead of night; they are coming through by stealth—coming to a bank account near you. I urge anybody listening to consider this if they have a dormant bank account that they have their funeral payment savings tucked away in, or if they have a farm deposit management account. Any kids who are still up, at 20 past eight this evening, and are perhaps watching this because the cartoons are not on any more, I would urge them to ask mum and dad to make sure they check their bank accounts, because the Labor government might be coming to take them. That is a dreadful thing to say to the children, and I certainly do not want to scare them, but it is the truth. It is the reality of the 21st century Ned Kellys we have got all the other side of the House. Mr Breheny said:

People should be able to leave money in bank accounts for as long as they wish without the fear that the government might come along and steal it from them. To do so is an arbitrary acquisition of property by the government.

The seven-year clause has been in place for some time, but we have reached a new low now that this government has reduced that to three years. Why has it been reduced to three years? Simply to pay for the Treasurer's inefficiency. He has had six goes at getting the budget right. How many times do you think he has produced a budget deficit? Any guesses? He has not produced one single surplus. He has produced six out of six budget deficits.

When the election is held on 14 September, if we on this side of the House are fortunate enough to get the faith of the people of Australia and they vote for our side of politics to once again restore dignity to the parliament and to govern Australia for the 44th parliamentary term, it is going to take 20 consecutive years at over and above any surplus that the Howard government ever produced to make sure that the debt that this government has racked up is paid off. I repeat: it is going to take 20 consecutive years at above the highest surplus that the Howard government ever produced to pay for the debt that this mob has racked up. That is shameful. This raid on people's bank accounts is also shameful. To think that we in Australia, in this great country of ours, have to have kids' and pensioners' and hard-working Australians' bank accounts pinched, robbed, raided, taken, stolen—call it what you like—by people from the Labor side is just truly remarkable. It is a disgrace.

We thought that the bushrangers belonged in the Edgar Penzig books. We thought that they belonged in Robbery Under Arms and those other great books and movies about 19th-century colonial Australia. But, no, they belong here again—they are running the Treasury on the Labor side of politics. It is truly a disgrace. We have got poor Jan Powell concerned about the missing $50,000 her mum had tucked away to help pay for her own funeral. We have got farm management deposits scheme raided, when the poor farmers are under enough pressure as it is to try to make ends meet because there has never been good public policy in the last five years from this Rudd-Gillard, possibly Rudd again, government.

We have now possibly got the kids' school bank accounts under threat because they have not had any activity in three years. All this is because the Treasurer simply cannot add up. The Treasurer simply comes out and says that he is going to produce a budget surplus, and we have got the Prime Minister backing him up and saying, 'Yes, we are going to produce a surplus,' over and over and over again. Hundreds of times the Prime Minister and her loyal deputy are on the record saying, 'We are going to produce a budget surplus,' and what did we get in the last budget—another deficit and more debt.

And on top of all that, we are now getting the kids and pensioners and the hardworking businesspeople and families of Australia having their bank accounts pinched, robbed and taken by this government. It is simply a disgrace. People will not stand for this and nor should they. They should not have to put up with this. This place should be the epitome of democracy. This government should be ruling for all Australians and showing that they care about hardworking people's bank accounts, about the Dollarmite savings accounts and about funeral nest eggs for people, but they do not. They are just pinching it to make up for their Treasurer's absolute ignorance as to how he could possibly ever produce a budget surplus. (Time expired)

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Riverina and his very comprehensive expose of why we stand here again tonight debating another piece of legislation in this place. Once again we have a government that has not listened to what the Australian people have to say and has not listened to the sensible ideas of the coalition when it first implemented this legislation some six or seven months ago. This Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill again demonstrates the government's incapacity to introduce legislation that is well thought through and well organised. The original legislation was introduced in a hurry and in a rush, purely to cover up, or to try to mitigate the effects of, its poor budget management. It is a poor policy measure in its original form and it has affected people with bank accounts right across the nation.

But it is not only ordinary bank accounts. As the member for Riverina rightly pointed out, it is also farm deposit accounts and things like mortgage offset accounts and savings accounts for children. There are any number of people who have been affected by this ludicrous grab for people's cash to fix their own budget profligacy. It reminds me of Robin Hood—except this government gets everything upside down. It is a Labor government's version of Robin Hood—take from the pensioners and give to the government! That is a new version of Robin Hood, the 21st century version of Robin Hood for this government across the chamber.

Just to give you an example of one instance that was quite justified in relation to the original legislation and was reported in the The Courier-Mail on 21 May 2013. It reads:

A QUEENSLAND pensioner emerged from a quintuple heart bypass only to find his bank had emptied his account, handing more than $22,000 to the Federal Government.

For what purpose—to make them look good, to try to offset the effects of their budget profligacy. This 75-year-old person had spent 21 days in hospital following quintuple heart bypass surgery and a second operation in April. When he and his wife, 57-year-old Mary Jane, went to check their Suncorp account they discovered their balance had plummeted from $22,600 to zero, and a note on 1 May read: 'Closing WDEL: government unclaimed moneys'. The sad irony of this story is that the couple had saved for 14 years in preparation for major health related costs. These people are the very people that we should be supporting. We want people to save for their own health related costs in retirement or as they get older. We want people to provide for themselves, yet here we have a government that takes people's money when they do exactly what we should be supporting them to do.

Suncorp claims that the letter was sent at the end of March notifying them that the account held in Mrs Duffy's name had been inactive for more than three years and would be closed if no action was taken. It says that attempts were made to call the couple on 16 April, followed by an account closure letter on 30 April. I respectfully suggest that if Mr Duffy was recovering from a quintuple heart bypass that maybe the phone call and this correspondence were not attended to in a timely manner. It is fully understandable given the Duffys' circumstances.

Mrs Duffy is quoted in The Courier-Mail article as saying, 'I call it stealing.' I would have to agree with Mrs Duffy. My understanding of the definition of stealing is to take something without somebody's knowledge and not to tell them. As far as I am concerned, that is exactly what happened. 'The government took it without telling us,' Mr Duffy said. Suncorp to their credit fully refunded the $22,000 out of its own coffers, but if I were Suncorp, I would not be holding my breath waiting for the government to refund that money to me any time soon. The reason the government are so desperate for Mr Duffy's money and other Australians' money is that they have none of their own left to play with.

We have seen six years of profligate spending, resulting in six budget deficits, total accumulated deficits of some $172 billion and gross debt of around $270 billion. We know from the budget papers that, ultimately, we will finish up with gross debt in the region of $340 billion. The government does not even want to admit that to the Australian people. It refuses to acknowledge or refuses to put before this parliament, before it rises for the election, a bill to increase the debt limit to a limit that will accommodate the debt that this government will accrue in the forward estimates, because it does not want to admit to the Australian people its failure and incompetence in managing the budgetary situation of this country.

But, fortunately, the Australian people will have a positive option on 14 September: the coalition, with a positive plan to deliver a diverse powerhouse economy, with legislation and a framework put in place to help create many jobs in the coming years; to return a positive mindset to the Australian economy and to the Australian people, so they know that they will have a positive future to look forward to, not one filled with debt and deficit as they are presently looking forward to with the current government.

I think it is instructive to have a look at a bit of history. When the bill was originally put before this House, for the very reasons we are here today to discuss these issues, the coalition did not support the passage of the original legislation through this parliament. Consequently, as a result of this legislation we now see ADIs either having to commit an offence of not transferring all unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth or needing to close reactivated accounts and transfer them to the Commonwealth. On the other hand, some ADIs have reported and transferred unclaimed moneys to the Commonwealth, including amounts in reactivated accounts. But, either way, the end result is that Australian people still lose out.

As a result of this government's profligate spending, the Treasury has confirmed that the Treasurer will break his own $300 million debt cap. In an effort to try to mitigate the effects of that, we have seen this government break one of the key tenets our democracy is built on. That tenet is the protection of private property rights. The government in this legislation is trampling on people's private property rights in having initially reduced the term with respect to unclaimed moneys from seven years to three years. We are now seeing directly the unintended consequence of that because, as with many pieces of legislation that go through this House, this government fails to think through the consequences of the legislation that it seeks to pass.

Not only are the government complicit in this, but those on the crossbenches are as well because they have supported the government in the removal of people's assets and private property rights in order to balance the budget to offset their spending profligacy. As I touched on earlier, the government have now refused to admit that, at some point, the debt limit will need to be increased above $300 million. Any increase will be the fifth such increase because, firstly, they increased it to $75 billion, then to $200 billion, then to $250 billion and then to $300 billion. In the 2012 budget, the Treasurer told the House:

We would be at the end of each year within the $250 billion cap.

We are already in excess of that and, given the current government's spending profligacy I do not see us getting back to anywhere under $250 billion, let alone staying under the $300 billion in the forward estimates.

I think it is worthwhile in the context of this matter to give a bit of background to this. The government attempted, in the 2012-13 MYEFO, to find savings to bolster their now defunct commitment of delivering a budget surplus. Interestingly, earlier this year, the budget deficit was going to be in the vicinity of $7 billion. We finished up with a budget deficit of $19 billion. They are just making it up as they are going along.

The government has announced an array of changes relating to unclaimed moneys in bank accounts, which we have already touched on. Not only was the time period reduced from seven years to three years with respect to bank account funds being claimed but also the time period with respect to life insurance moneys, previously treated as unclaimed after seven years, was also reduced to three years. Superannuation accounts, with balances of less than $2,000, and the accounts of unidentified members that had been inactive for 12 months were also required to be transferred to the Commissioner of Taxation. In addition, there was the reduction from five years to 12 months for the period of inactivity before which a superannuation account of identifiable members was transferred to the ATO.

Unclaimed property of corporations is now being recognised directly as Commonwealth consolidated revenue, impacting the underlying cash position of the Commonwealth, upon receipt by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission as opposed to the Companies and Unclaimed Moneys Special Account.

All of this is aimed to boost the budget bottom line by some $900 million. To what effect? If the budget blow-out from earlier this year was from $7 billion to $19 billion, I do not think $900 million is going to make much of a difference. The consequence is it creates issues for ordinary Australians because they did not know and were not advised.

The coalition is an alternative with a positive plan for our economy: to create a powerhouse and diverse economy that is geared towards creating new jobs over a five- and 10-year period, by removing the red weed of regulation that is invading our economy courtesy of this government opposite. It is almost like the Labor government version of War of the Worlds. You see this red weed of regulation spreading throughout the economy, entangling and choking the life out of our business community.

The coalition has a four-point plan for the economy if elected and we will offer consistency and stability in government.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the members opposite for their contribution, but the coalition is committed to restoring sound public finances. We will get rid of the waste and get Australia back onto a financially responsible track. We will provide hope, reward and opportunity. (Time expired)

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the debate be adjourned, and the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the debate be adjourned.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no doubt at all that Labor wants to shut this debate down because it is all about—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Murray will resume her seat and her colleagues will graciously leave the chamber so she can be heard in silence. I ask people to quickly and quietly leave the chamber.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me start again and say this is historic in not having this Gillard government shut down this debate. There are enough people with decency in this House to say we must have the public here, that this is the most extraordinary grab for cash that this government, and perhaps any federal government, has ever attempted.

Imagine the plight of Maurice Holland, an 82-year-old from Picola, a tiny little place nestled against the Murray River. He drives to his nearest bank 54 minutes away in Shepparton. He goes in to take some money out of his bank account. He knows there are thousands of dollars in his bank account. He does not use that account very often because he is saving steadily for his extreme old age. Imagine his shock when the teller tells him, 'I am sorry, Mr Holland, there is no money in your account.' As Maurice Holland said, 'It was a kick in the guts for me. I was stunned and shocked. I don't want anyone to have that experience again.'

In rather touching loyalty to his bank, Mr Holland does not want to name which bank it was in Shepparton but he is stunned and shocked. In all of his 82 years of life he never expected a democratically elected federal government to make a grab for his hard earned cash. He was told he would have to fill in lots of forms. He may get his money back in three months if he is lucky or he could go and check out the ASIC website where he could search for his money on moneysmart.gov.au. Mr Holland continues to be shocked and disappointed but he is amongst thousands of Australians who just cannot believe that this government has stooped to such a low ebb that it will do anything to try and get some money onto its side of the ledgers.

We are told they would have about $900 million over a four-year period to 2015-16 by what they have done in these bills reducing the time before an unoperated or inactive account ends up in Treasury. Can you imagine how many of our older Australians are putting a little bit of money aside for their grandchildren and to want to see their children inherit a little from their hard earned savings? They do not touch those accounts, often for years. Can you imagine the older Australians who are putting aside a funeral fund, hoping that the interest might accumulate over the years so their children do not have to pay for their funerals? Can you think about those who have had some money put aside for a deposit for a house or in another one of the cases of my constituents for a farm? They commit to buying that property, knowing that their bank account has $100,000 or $200,0000 carefully tucked away. They sign the paperwork for the deposit on that property and then, to their shock and horror, they discover that their bank account has been cleaned out. There is no cash there but they have signed up to purchase that property. There was money there. They have not spent it but, unfortunately, they have not activated that account for a shorter period of time than was originally the case.

There are credit ratings that can be trashed in this process. One of the people caught up in this is wondering what will happen with their attempt to buy a property, given that they do not think they will see their cash for another six months. This is the most extraordinary grab for cash we have ever seen. We have bank accounts with unclaimed moneys that were going to the federal government after seven years but that has now been reduced to just three years. We have life insurance moneys previously treated as unclaimed after seven years. That is now only three years. Imagine if you think you have life insurance but you actually do not.

Superannuation accounts with balances of less than $2,000 and accounts of unidentified members that have been inactive for 12 months are required to be transferred to the Commissioner for Taxation. That in particular picks up all of the overseas international backpackers. When they come and pick in the Goulburn Valley, they frequently end up with superannuation accounts of less than $2,000. That happens quite regularly. Now they are going to lose all that money. It is going to go back to revenue even though they have sweated under the sun of the Great Northern Plains picking fruit. They have earned income, they have earned some superannuation, but it is less than $2,000. That is gone.

They are going to also reduce from five years to 12 months the period of inactivity before which the superannuation accounts of unidentified members are transferred to the ATO. Of course, it all about unclaimed properties of corporations. They are caught up in all of this too.

We wonder: why would any government expose themselves to the distress and shock of our hardworking, great older and younger Australians? Why would any government do this? It is an extraordinary act. In the case of my great constituent, the 82-year-old Maurice Holland, I doubt if he will ever get over the shock of going to the bank and finding that none of his money is there. I don't think the persons who thought they were buying a farm will ever get over the shock of finding that they cannot honour the commitment they made to the seller that they were going to pay a deposit by a certain date.

Why has the government done this? Well, the answer is shocking. We have as a confirmed fact that Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, will break his own $300 billion debt cap sometime very soon. The Treasury said the expected peak of Commonwealth government securities on issue, subject to the cap, will be a massive $340 billion.

The coalition left Labor with a $20 billion surplus, no net debt and an unemployment rate of around four per cent. But now I am afraid we have the Treasurer's recent budget with a $20 billion blow-out in the space of only six months. The government has already increased the debt limit on four occasions—firstly to $75 billion, then to $200 billion, then to $250 billion and then to $300 billion. When you have this circumstance, I guess you can expect to see a government stoop very, very low indeed. They have already trashed the economy, they are already heavily in debt, they are already borrowing into the lifetime opportunities of our children and grandchildren. They are already doing extraordinary things like having line items in the budget of some $500 million without any actual description of what the money is for and every cent of it is borrowed.

So when you have this circumstance, when you have promised six years in a row that you will produce a surplus and instead you have had six years of deficit, I guess, if you have a little imagination, you can put your hand in the back pocket of ordinary Australians and take their savings. The trouble is that is not conscionable. It is not what Australians expect a democratically elected government, even a Labor government, to do. The shock, the stress caused to people like Mr Holland is something that, at the age of 82, he is not likely to get over very quickly. It is a tragedy when people who thought that they were going to, in their late 80s, have money for their funerals set aside then hear it will be six months before they can probably get their money back and that they have to fill out a lot of paperwork first.

The banks are not even required under this legislation to tell their account owners when the government is reaching into their accounts because they have not been active for a couple of years. Some banks are electing to tell people, but others are not. So you can imagine the distress and the shock when someone goes to their bank, a bank has not chosen to inform their clients, and the piggy bank is empty. The people coming to me in shock and despair have particularly been older Australians, and in particular they have mentioned their children's inheritance. They have mentioned their own life insurance. They have mentioned thinking that they had money put aside for a rainy day. What they have instead is a nasty and rude shock.

In my electorate of Murray not many people have ever chosen to vote Labor, but those few who have are now totally disenchanted. When a government starts to behave like this it does describe new lows of behaviour for any democratically elected government. I know there was an expectation that it would be able to cream off some $900 million out of people's bank accounts over a four-year period, but surely it would be much more conscionable to have looked at government savings, to have looked at, for example, less advertising of the NBN—the National Broadband Network. Wouldn't it have been better to have looked at that pork-barrelling prior to the election with that $500 million, not as yet accounted for, and whether that was really something that could be swapped for raiding ordinary people's bank accounts?

I have to wonder if the people of Australia will forgive the government for these dishonourable acts. I wonder if on 14 September, when people go to the polling booths, people like Mr Holland, if they will have come close to forgiving the government for giving them the shocks of their lives when they found their hard earned savings had been taken without their permission? And simply telling people to go off to a website in order to apply to claim their money back is not good enough. Most of the people in my electorate do not have access to a website. In particular, my older Australians do not know how to operate a website and look for lost moneys, and they often do not have an 11-year-old grandson at hand to help them.

This is a disgusting piece of Australian government policy. This particular bill just neatens up what has already been done. The coalition opposed the contracting back of the time frames for when money could be taken out of bank accounts. We opposed it in the Senate and we opposed it in the House of Representatives. It is an unconscionable act for any government to go into people's bank accounts—accounts which, often for very good reasons, have not been activated for long periods of time—and take money, and to make it difficult for people to get that cash back. Six months is a very long time in the life of an 82-year-old; it can perhaps be too long for those who cannot get back their funeral benefits fund within six months. I call on this government to really think a bit harder about this. It is not too late for it to have a strong sense of conscience and to look again at what it has done. I suspect though it is all locked away. That $900 million is going to be very important for a government that has this massive $300 billion debt cap now.

For a government that inherited a $20 billion surplus, no net debt, unemployment rates at around four per cent, it has been an extraordinary performance. We have had things like the pink batts fiasco; the Building the Education Revolution, which gave people schoolrooms they did not want instead of toilet blocks, and in the country areas they were not allowed to make use of local tenderers; the cash-for-clunkers scheme; GroceryWatch; and the NBN, which is not going to come near any of my communities for so very, very long. There are all of those sadnesses, disappointments for a government that does not seem to have learnt from its first term, and now we have this: people who thought they had their life savings tucked away—people who were putting aside money for their children's inheritance, for their life insurance, for their funerals, for that property they wanted to buy—going to the bank and finding, oops, the Treasurer, Mr Swan, has been there first.

I condemn this whole business of the government emptying people's accounts. I think it is a desperate move from a desperate government. It is not the way to behave. It is a tragedy that the government is in such dire straits with the economy. I know so many people in my electorate are counting down the days until 14 September. In the case of Mr Holland, he is just hoping that his money reappears in his bank account. He has been promised it could be there in two or three months if he is lucky. He has filled out the paperwork. He has driven the 50 minutes back to his property at Picola, now he sits and waits—a deeply disappointed man wondering what unAustralian activities or actions might still be in store for him as he continues to live under the regime of the Gillard government.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Having risen to speak to the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013, I note it does afford the opposition, or indeed aggrieved members of the government benches if they choose to do so, the opportunity to draw attention to the fact that the legislation that said that the government could thieve, purloin, take away and deny people their own money was introduced firstly as the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Unclaimed Money and Other Measures) Bill 2012. This bill before us highlights the fact that there was a severe impediment in that original legislation. What it does, and this is why we will of course be supporting this amendment bill, is actually permit the government to refund money taken from people whose accounts had been so-called 'dormant' as at a date set by banks or deposit-taking institutions but that subsequent to that date had been reactivated—for example, they had transacted business—but because it was after the set date the government still took the money. This bill is to allow that money to be repaid, so, of course, we will be supporting the bill. But the important point to make is that this whole legislation is totally and utterly unprincipled.

The member for Riverina spoke powerfully and strongly when he began his speech by listing the names of famous bushrangers who were, in fact, people who had a reputation for breaking the law. But compared to the actions of this government, they look like principled men. The fact of the matter is that the original legislation which is being amended by this bill, whereby the Banking Act itself is being amended, now means that the time has been shortened from seven years to three years to treat money as unclaimed. But this time the money goes straight into the government coffers and it resulted over the forward estimates in some $900 million being used to prop up the bottom line for the government when it was in its phase of saying, 'We are going to have a surplus.'

Nobody on this side of the chamber ever believed that the government was ever capable of delivering a surplus. After all, they have not delivered a surplus in the entire time that the member for Longman has been alive—and they were certainly not likely to be delivering a surplus in the last budget we received. In fact, we saw the hysterical events whereby we went from hearing the government say there will be a surplus to hearing the government say the deficit would be $7 billion and then, no, it would be $12 billion—and finally, of course, it is $19 billion. But that is only what we have until we see the final figures. When we finally go to the election and we see Treasury's figures, as distinct from the Treasurer's figures, and then we will really know what the extent of the deficit really is.

In their great desire to pretend that they were going to reach a surplus, they decided that they would steal the money out of people's bank accounts, and we have heard such examples that have been given by colleagues who have already spoken. We have heard of the example where a Queensland pensioner emerged from heart surgery to find that the bank had emptied his account and given it to the federal government, as the bank was required to do by law. We have heard of other people who have been entering into transactions knowing that they had money in the bank and yet when they went to complete their transactions they found that the money had been taken away and then they have had to go through the rigmarole of filling out forms and trying to trace their own money to get it back—and for the penalties they might incur in the interim would they ever been recompensed? I think not.

If we go to the explanatory memorandum, the EM, of this amending bill, the Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013, and if we go to the section that says 'Financial impact' we see—and isn't this typical of the government:

The financial impact from the Bill is likely to be low but is difficult to quantify due to insufficient data being available.

So isn't that typical of the sort of legislation we see coming into this House on a continuing basis! The fact of the matter is that this government never does its homework properly. Whatever it touches turns to dross and the net result is that we have a country which is not being governed, and the sooner we can go to an election and let the people have their say the better.

Let us go back to what that initial legislation did—and we opposed that legislation. I am talking about, of course, the Treasury Legislation Amendment (Unclaimed Money and Other Measures) Bill 2012, which has since been enacted. What it did was to say that the time periods for accounts to be treated as unclaimed would be shortened, for bank accounts from seven years to three years and for life insurance moneys previously treated as unclaimed, from seven years to three years. Superannuation accounts with balances of less than $2,000 and accounts of unidentifiable members that had been inactive for 12 months were required to be transferred to the Commissioner of Taxation. It was reducing from five years to 12 months—12 months!—the period of inactivity before which the superannuation accounts of unidentifiable members were transferred to the Australian tax office. Also, unclaimed property of corporations was to be taken directly and placed in the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund, thereby impacting the underlying cash position of the Commonwealth upon receipt by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, as opposed to the companies and unclaimed moneys special account.

Coalition members, those on this side of the House, attempted to amend that bill and sought to delay the implementation of the schedules which related to bank accounts and first home saver accounts for a full year so it would not commence until 31 December 2013, which would be after the election and would allow the people to be able to vote on that issue as one of the items that went before the coming election. That would have been a reasonable thing to do, to allow people to have a say on whether or not the government should be stealing the money. We also sought to delay schedule 4 of that bill, relating to superannuation accounts, for a full year to align with the deadline of the autoconsolidations necessary under the previously announced SuperStream reforms which were to commence from 1 January 2014.

There was the Senate economics committee report where the coalition brought in a dissenting report as to whether or not this legislation should be passed before the coming election. The government, however, brought in its own amendments. They sought to amend the commencement date of the schedules in order to provide for more time for authorised deposit-taking institutions, first homeowner savings account providers, life insurers and superannuation funds to implement the changes with no financial impact as a result of the change in commencement. There are a number of other alterations they made to their own legislation. It is not an uncommon practice for this government to have to amend its own legislation simply because it has not done sufficient work in the first place to make it acceptable.

I think it is important to understand just how heinous and draconian the legislation is as it affects individuals. This piece of legislation before us right now says that it will exclude reactivated accounts—that is, accounts that have been assessed unclaimed but are transacted prior to being transferred to the Commonwealth—from being transferred to the Commonwealth and to allow the Commonwealth to return the moneys collected. Under the initial legislation there was no power for the government to return money. So they could thieve it, but they could not return it.

Where the reactivation of the account has taken place after the so-called date from which it was meant to be transferred many of the banks in fact have themselves transferred their own money to the Commonwealth and left their customers' money in their bank accounts, because they thought that morally that was the correct thing to do. Whether or not subsequently the Commonwealth is going to be liable for paying interest on that money remains a question to be determined. Hence, the explanatory memorandum to this bill says they really cannot quantify what the effect of this bill will be. As I said, this is typical of the way this government organises itself.

But let us look at that moral question. An authorised deposit-taking institution has decided that it will use its own money to remit money to the Commonwealth so as not to commit an offence under the legislation as passed and so their own customers will not have their money stolen by the Commonwealth and so that when they went to utilise their money they would not find it was simply not there. The government has given way and brought in this bill to enable two things to occur: that where the account has been reactivated, they are not obliged to in fact transfer the money; and that where the ADIs have in fact sent the money they can actually repay it.

What an extraordinary tale of woe it is in dealing with individuals' property. But, again, why should we be surprised? Because the Labor government, as a collectivist government, always believes that it can spend individuals' money more wisely than the individuals can themselves. That is why it is a high-taxing party. It believes that, if it takes people's money compulsorily by way of taxation, it will spend that more wisely than the individual if it is left in their own hands. That is a big demarcation between Labor and Liberal principles. We believe that an individual will always spend their own money more wisely than a government which says it is spending it on their behalf and for better causes.

This bill—this whole raft of legislation—is quite in line with that philosophy that says that the more money we can take from individuals and spend according to what we believe in, then that is a better outcome for Australia. We reject that proposition and say that money that is left in the control of individual Australians—with the ability to use their own judgement, their own innovation and their own ability—will always be money which is spent more wisely than a government that pretends to spend it on your behalf.

In a way this legislation is iconic in the way that it highlights the difference between the two approaches to government. This Labor government spends recklessly to the extent that we now have a gross debt of $300 billion and we have an annual interest bill of $12 a year. That is $300 billion and $12 billion a year in interest repayments. Yet, at the time they took office from us, we left them with no debt, we had a surplus and we had money in the bank. And you had an increase in revenue of between $70 billion and $80 billion, but your expenditure has been $120 billion. This has meant, quite frankly, that at every turn you have overspent the amount of money that is coming in by recklessly choosing to base it on projections for incoming revenue—projections which have been so out of kilter with reality that we now have this huge accumulated deficit, which is the gift of the Labor Party to the Australian people and the generations that are going to have to repay it!

This is an appalling package of legislation and this bill actually tries to remedy some of the damage you have already done. As I said, why are we surprised that we would support this bill when we rejected the original legislation? I put to you, Deputy Speaker Lyons, that we are seeing a very clear differentiation between the two parties and one which the electorate will certainly consider when we go to the election. (Time expired)

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this Banking Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2013 tonight, because the government not that long ago actually tried to shut this debate down. I and other members will now have the opportunity to speak after this debate adjourns tonight for the adjournment debate. We will come back again tomorrow and the other members of the coalition who wish to speak on this bill, of which there are still a number, will have that opportunity.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this bill, because, as I said, the government were defeated 70-68 on the floor of this House tonight when they were trying to shut down the further exposure of their failings in this very important bill in relation to unclaimed money. This bill seeks to clean up the mess of yet another government mistake. There was also a matter that was determined by this House earlier tonight. The Manager of Government Business was seeking to shut down a debate to try to ram through another important bill that at some stage will be considered by this House. That matter related to the government's overstretched 457 changes, which will have very significant implications. They have been subject to no consultation and there is no regulatory impact statement.

I am disappointed that the government were seeking to cut short the debate on this matter this evening. They were trying to usurp process and ram that other matter through this House tonight before a very important thing could be done to observe procedure—and that is the tabling of the Selection Committee report that deals with the referral of bills to committees. It is no secret—and I have said this publicly—that the coalition have sought to have the government's migration act changes to introduce the union red tape for 457s referred to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment. Whether that has been done is a matter that I am sure this House would like to know from the Selection Committee before it were to commence debate. If it is indeed being referred to that committee, then that debate should not and cannot proceed in this place.

I am sure that the member for McMahon would be interested in this because he is a member of that committee. I am sure he would welcome the opportunity. He and I may have had many disagreements on some matters, but one thing I will give the member for McMahon credit for is our bipartisanship on the importance of skilled migration. I am sure he would be interested in seeing how the fairly effective routine housekeeping reforms that were stewarded through the skilled migration advisory council, which could be done by regulation, were translated into this jumped up, sexed up claim that the now minister for immigration has been seeking to enforce on the debate. I am pleased that the government has been thwarted tonight in that fairly grubby attempt by the Manager of Government Business and that this House has asserted its authority on the government in voting them down on the floor of this House.

This matter before the House tonight is yet another example of cleaning up the government's mess. I am reminded of the former—and our greatest ever—Treasurer, the former member for Higgins, Peter Costello, who will always be remembered for his great achievements in that portfolio. No other people, except those on this side of this House, are ever willing to pay tribute to the greatest Treasurer we have ever had. No-one can do a better job than the current Treasurer, by his own appalling performance, to highlight the difference between the performance of the best Treasurer this country has ever had and the performance of the current Treasurer. I said in my maiden speech in this place almost six years ago that the then Treasurer, Peter Costello, was the greatest we have ever had—and that position is under no present threat. That remains as true today as it was when I said it almost six years ago.

There will be the opportunity for the member for North Sydney, if we are indeed elected and the Australian people bestow that great honour and responsibility on those on this side of the House, to show that he is up to the task. Many of us on this side of the House, if we are given that opportunity, will have big shoes to fill. In my case, the member for Berowra, the father of the House, has very big shoes to fill when it comes to immigration—if that is indeed what the Leader of the Opposition were to bestow on me. But the former member for Higgins, the greatest Treasurer, left big shoes to fill.

What we have here in this bill is an example of a government that has spent all of your money and has now got its hand down the back of the couch trying to find whatever loose change it can to make the payments. They fumbled in their first attempt to shore up their surplus, which never appeared. The surplus of this government is as elusive as Captain Emad himself as he skipped out of the country and out of the clutches of this government as easily as he sailed in on a boat—one of the more than 725 that have come to this country under this government's failed policies. What started out with the master and commander of border failures under this government and the former Prime Minister is only eclipsed by the current Prime Minister.

This bill seeks to take from the Australian people money which is theirs. It used to be said that, if you had a bad government, put your money under the bed. That used to be a joke. It is now true to the extent that, under this government's changes, they can reach into your account and rip it out, even if—given their folly on their original introduction of these measures—the account from which it is taken subsequently has a transaction. That is what happens with this government's 'ready, fire, aim' approach. We see it everywhere: we have seen it on pink batts, we have seen it on boats, we have seen it on budgets, we have seen it on the carbon tax—we have seen it on everything. Ready, fire and the aim comes later, because that is how this government operates. Tonight we saw that again from the Manager of Government Business. He swaggered in here seeking to throw his weight around this parliament and he was voted down. We voted him down in this, the people's house, the House of Representatives.

The show on that side is falling apart. The show on the other side is a sideshow; it is a soap opera where the script just keeps getting worse. The Manager of Government Business came in here and tried to jump the shark tonight and he fell in the tank—that is what happened to the Manager of Government Business and the government in this chamber tonight. I think losing the confidence on that bill in the House tonight sums up the chaos that is occurring in the government ranks at this most important time.

As we come to this place in these last few weeks of sittings, I know the Australian people will be itching and looking forward to the opportunity to have their say. This parliament had its say tonight. It had its say against a government that tried to enforce its grubby will on this parliament and they were rejected as they indeed should be. This is a government that also deserve to be rejected by the Australian people because they just cannot get anything right, and this bill proves that they are incompetent in their implementation once again.

Debate interrupted.