Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The good old National Party. Great to see the member for Richmond over there—a lover of the National Party. Good to see the member for Wakefield over there—and that he has lasted this long. But it is always a pleasure to see the member for McMahon sitting there right opposite me. In this matter of public importance the member for McMahon talked about Labor's record as opposed to our record. Of course, he was the immigration minister, and in the financial years July 2010 to June 2013 he was a bit like Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. In his case it was not quite 1,000, but 602—38,096 illegal boat arrivals came on his watch.

But let's talk about a few other members of the Labor Party front bench. We have the member for Grayndler, who promised roads but could not and would not fund them. Luckily, theDeputy Prime Minister, the member for Wide Bay and the Nationals leader, is getting on with the job of doing what the member for Grayndler could not do. The member for Watson pinched water from my farmers and other irrigation farmers in other electorates too—kept buying it back. He made farmers account for every single drop of water, but then wanted to buy all this water back and did so for the environment which they knew they could never deliver. Then we had the member for Lilley—debt and deficit were his trademarks, absolutely.

I am so glad that the Assistant Treasurer and the Prime Minister today announced that we, the coalition, are going to deliver on our commitment to improve the way unclaimed money in banking accounts and life insurance policies is managed. The member for Maribyrnong, when he was the Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation in 2012, in the previous government, reduced the period of time that inactive bank accounts were declared unclaimed from seven years to three years.

I have this report from the Hervey Bay Independent. On 31 May 2013, it wrote:

The family of a 95-year-old Hervey Bay pensioner who had $50,000 forfeited from a bank account because it hadn't been used for seven years is warning others to be aware of the laws.

Craignish resident Jan Powell said she was shocked last week when she went to check the status of an account her mother Doris Osborne opened in 2002 established to pay her own funeral costs, and found the balance had gone from $49,000 to—what do you think, member for Lyne or member for Page?

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