Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition has a long and proud record when it comes to improving Australia’s corporate legal framework. The former, coalition government certainly initiated a lot of reforms, including the clarification of Australia’s corporate framework in the Corporations Act 2001. Also in government we oversaw the Corporate Law Economic Reform Program, which was an ongoing program of reform to further clarify and strengthen Australia’s corporate law. In fact, my distinguished predecessor, former Senator Ian Campbell, was a driving force behind many of those CLERP reforms.

The coalition is broadly supportive of the whole bill. We will be supporting the legislation today. However, we did have some concerns, which were expressed in the additional comments in the Senate Economics Legislation Committee report, around some of the additional powers to be granted to ASIC. However, David Bradbury, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, very constructively came up with a solution to those concerns. I will seek to table at the conclusion of my remarks, the letter from Mr Bradbury outlining some of the safeguards he and ASIC will pursue to make sure that some of our concerns are addressed.

Principally this bill will make it more difficult to obtain access to private information kept on company registers. For instance, the measures will require persons seeking a copy of the company register to apply to the company and state the purpose for which they will use the register. At the moment anyone can demand a company’s register, which contains shareholder names and contact details. This information can and at times has been used to target vulnerable shareholders with unsolicited off-market offers on unfavourable terms, which of course is something that none of us would support. It is a predatory practice which has resulted in vulnerable people being taken advantage of.

Secondly, the bill will increase the criminal penalties associated with breaches of the insider-trading and market misconduct provisions in part 7.10 of the Corporations Act. We support those changes. However, the bill will also permit ASIC to apply for a search warrant without first having to issue a notice to produce material sought by the warrant. The current arrangements provide those under investigation with an opportunity—the government tells us—to destroy incriminating material before a search warrant can be issued. The coalition is always loath to increase the arbitrary power of government entities without a valid public interest justification. That is why we wanted the Senate economics committee to give the bill a more detailed examination. The committee handed down its report on 16 November, and I congratulate Senator Bushby for his contribution as the deputy chair of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee.

The report identified some areas in which the bill could and should be improved. For instance, ASIC should report the number of times it uses its new powers and what they have been used for. We are particularly keen to see the share registry provisions of this bill passed, so we have accepted ASIC’s assurances that it will publish such details. In due course we shall seek to mandate such publication.

Moreover the government has acknowledged the arguments of the coalition senators’ additional comments in the report. The government has agreed that it will consider these sorts of amendments in future corporation amendment bills. So, in the interests of facilitating timely passage of this legislation and accepting the good faith of the government, we have accepted to deal with this as non-controversial legislation  today. I now seek leave to table the correspondence from Hon. David Bradbury to me including the attachment from ASIC.

Leave granted.