Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Minchin, the Minister for Finance and Administration. Does the minister agree with Senator Coonan’s statement in question time on Monday about the T3 prospectus, when she said:

ASIC has signed off on the prospectus. Clearly, the prospectus complies with ASIC’s view as to what are appropriate regulatory conclusions.

Is the minister aware that the Corporations Act expressly states that ASIC takes no responsibility for the content of a prospectus? Can the minister clarify whether Senator Coonan is simply ignorant of the law as to ASIC’s role, or can he confirm whether he or any other minister asked ASIC to specifically approve the T3 prospectus? What was the nature of the approval that was sought and, according to Senator Coonan, granted by ASIC for the contents of the T3 prospectus?

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The prospectus has to be registered with ASIC, so all appropriate steps were taken to make sure that the document was in a form that was capable of being registered with ASIC. That was successfully concluded, and the document has been registered with ASIC. With our 10 teams of lawyers who were working on this document there was of course constant interaction with ASIC to ensure that the risk disclosure statements were of a nature that was capable of being registered with ASIC. That is absolutely right.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Can the minister explain exactly what ASIC’s role was in relation to the specific parts of the T3 prospectus and whether it approved the final version, particularly in relation to the ‘Cousins risk’? Further, can the minister advise whether Senator Coonan was wrong when she said that ASIC had ‘signed off on the prospectus’? Will the minister now ensure that this misleading information is corrected and communicated to the market? Aren’t potential investors entitled to know the nature of ASIC’s involvement in the prospectus, and will the minister now take steps to ensure the market is appropriately informed?

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is just about idiotic semantics. Of course we complied fully with the Corporations Law. As I said, we have had 10 teams of lawyers crawling all over this. The document had to be registered with ASIC. If Senator Coonan used a more colloquial expression to describe the process by which the document was registered with ASIC, so be it. She has not misled the Senate in any way or misled anybody. The document has been registered with ASIC and, to the extent that ASIC was required to be involved in discussion as to the description of the risks, it was to ensure that the document could be registered with ASIC.