Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

But it does have responsibility, Senator Watson, for regulating self-managed superannuation funds. It seems to me to be not unreasonable that the tax office would go and check the self-managed superannuation funds through which investments were placed in Westpoint to see if they comply with the law. They may well comply with the law. We do not know because the tax office has not checked. That is my concern about the tax office’s lack of activity in respect of Westpoint—it has not checked. The tax office admitted that to me at Senate estimates. I was not asking it for names or who it had checked or had not checked. I wanted to know whether the tax office had specifically followed through on the self-managed superannuation funds. It has regulatory oversight with respect to the Westpoint investments. That is what I wanted to know, as a matter of fact, and the tax office said, ‘No’.

The tax office may not have enough resources—it is only checking 3,000 out of 300-odd thousand a year—and I think that was implied in a response from one of the tax office officials. But the fact is that it has not attempted, at least not to the date of the estimates hearing, a specific check on self-managed superannuation funds for which it has regulatory oversight.