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

Thank you, yes. They are Senator Joyce’s mates. They are his own working colleagues, as part of this Liberal-National Party so-called coalition. I do not even know whether Senator Joyce got up in the party room. Senator Minchin might like to tell us whether Senator Joyce got up and railed against the Treasurer, the Prime Minister and Senator Minchin about this particular piece of legislation. I suspect he did not. And I suspect he did not rail against it in the National Party meeting room.

The sad fact of life for Senator Joyce is, as he well knows, that the National Party is just the doormat of the Liberal Party, the dominant party in the coalition. That is a sad fact of life for him. He has to convince his own colleagues but he cannot even do that. He cannot even convince his own colleagues, if he took the argument up with them. I would be interested to know whether he did that.

Briefly, on the activity of private equity funds, particularly overseas private equity funds, it is true that there has been significant and growing activity in terms of foreign investment from overseas private equity funds. There is significant and growing activity in this area—as there is worldwide. And there are some legitimate issues about the activities of private equity funds, particularly around transparency, who is effectively making decisions, share ownership and compliance. I think there are a whole range of issues and our own regulator has identified some concerns about those types of issues.

There are some legitimate economic issues in a capitalist economy about whether too much money is paid in terms of purchasing assets. I think I read that Mr Morgan, the head of Westpac bank, expressed concerns about some of this activity. They are all legitimate issues for debate, but they are not the issues that we are dealing with in this bill. We are not dealing with improving compliance or transparency in respect of foreign equity funds.

I point out that, fundamentally—as we all, I think, acknowledge—there is an increase in activity in this area in terms of foreign equity. It is occurring without this bill having been passed, Senator Joyce. At the end of the day, with the passage of this particular piece of legislation at schedule 4, will it decrease or, as you argue, increase the activity of foreign equity investment in Australia? I do not think it will. That activity is already occurring, anyway, without the bill and without the capital gains provision. For the reasons I have mentioned, Labor will support schedule 4.