Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

The control of short selling in this country is exercised by the independent regulator, ASIC. ASIC has the ability and has exercised that, and it is a power that your government gave ASIC to control and ban—to control the way in which it is utilised in the market and to ban it if it wished. ASIC has chosen to impose an interim temporary ban on short selling. It is controlling it. What I have indicated through my press release yesterday and in previous comments is that this government are going to act on a gap left in the Corporations Act by the previous Liberal government in respect of the disclosure of covered short selling and the transactions in the Australian financial markets. We want open disclosure of these transactions in order to ensure a fair, transparent and competitive market.

The Corporations Amendment (Short Selling) Bill which I have released for a four-week exposure period is in preparation for possible future removal by ASIC, the independent regulator, of the current halt on most types of covered short selling—ban or control, however the opposition wants to have it—that was put in place. It is ASIC that has put in place an interim temporary ban and controls on covered short selling in this country.

In recent days our key regulators, both the independent regulator, ASIC, and I might say, the ASX when it comes to naked short selling, on Friday evening put prohibitions, temporary bans—interim controls, if you like—on covered short selling. That has been carried out independently. That is something that I have said time and time again is not within this government’s power, and we have no intention of legislating in respect of it. What we do intend to legislate on is the disclosure. I had already outlined this yesterday. I outlined it in an earlier question. Unfortunately there is a lot of conversation and debate about short sales and the opposition are just showing that they believe a short sale is a summer sale at David Jones. (Time expired)