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

As I am sure all senators and the broader community are aware, we are facing a global economic and financial challenge of massive proportions, and everything that a government should do in order to underline certainty in the current market circumstances needs to be done. We only have to look at the recent bailout of Citibank, in the last day, to illustrate that. Certainty and concerns over confidence are among the key missing ingredients in the global stock market today, and one key area, in which we inherited from the former Liberal government a gap in regulation and supervision, relates to what is known as short selling. Those on the other side of the chamber did nothing about ensuring adequate disclosure of short selling in almost 12 years in government. In that three-month period after the issue of short selling and the inadequate regulatory and supervisory regime, we acted in the national interest to consult with a wide range of players in the Australian market to develop a short selling amendment bill that will do three things: it will, firstly, ban naked short selling—