Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Banking Laws Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill 2015. This piece of legislation is just another example of the mess that this coalition government have been left to clean up, the mess that we have inherited from the former Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Let me go back to the history of why this legislation is needed. In the dying days of that Labor government—after they had wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in reckless politically-motivated spending—they had a desperate need for cash. There was little difference between the government's desperate need for cash and that of a junkie eyeing off the cash drawer at a petrol station. Do you know where they went looking for cash? They went looking for cash in the private bank accounts of Australian citizens.

They passed a law that deemed that the money in every single bank account in this nation that had not had a withdrawal or a deposit in as little as the last 36 months would be transferred to them. That was any account with no withdrawal or deposit—and that does not include interest payments from the bank. So unless you had actively gone into the bank and made a withdrawal or deposit in your bank account in the last 36 months, that money was taken from your account and put into the coffers of the previous Labor government for them to spend.

What happened? They cleaned out—wait for this number—156,000 accounts across the nation. I see the member for Parramatta is down there at the desk. I know she is a very avid doorknocker around her electorate. That works out to be around 1,000 accounts for each electorate represented by the 156 members of the House of Representatives. Where we might have 40,000-odd households, that works out to be one household in every 40 in this nation that had their accounts raided by the previous Labor government. And the amount that was raided was $550 million—$550 million was raided from 156,000 bank accounts across this nation and transferred into the coffers of the previous Labor government.

Let me give you some examples of a few of those 156,000 accounts. One belonged to 82-year-old Maura Stanford, who had put some money away in case she needed some repairs done to her house. She had put money away for a rainy day. That day came and she needed a tradesman. She had $12,000 in that account. Do you know what happened? The tradesman came and when she went to get money to pay the tradesman the money had gone. The money had been taken from her own personal bank account and transferred to the accounts of the Treasurer under the Labor government. The account had been cleaned out. She went to the bank and said, 'What do you mean my money is no longer there?'

The staff at the branch had to comfort her. She was in tears, trying to understand how anyone had the right to take her money. She was forced to get an expensive cash advance on a credit card, and she said, 'I never thought I'd see the day when this sort of thing would happen in Australia.' Neither did I. Never did I think I would see the day that a government in this country would raid the bank accounts of Australians simply because they were inactive for 36 months, but that is what happened under the previous Labor government.

And guess who was financial services minister during this period. Guess who: the current opposition leader of this nation. He was in charge of financial services of this country. You would have thought there would be someone on the Labor side of parliament that had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and simply say: 'This is wrong. We cannot raid the bank accounts of Australians.' But there was not a whisper. It was all under the control of the former financial services minister, the man who portrays himself as the alternative Prime Minister of this country.

Another one of those 156,000 people that had their money raided was a Queensland pensioner named Adrian Duffy. Mr Duffy had put aside $22,000 in case he had a medical emergency. That medical emergency arose, and he needed a quintuple heart bypass. He came out of hospital hoping to access that money to pay his medical bills, and guess what: his account had been raided. Every single cent of the $22,000 that he had in his account was raided and taken by the previous Labor government.

It did not stop there. They even went into children's accounts. There is the case of young Seamus Hadfield, aged five, and his younger brother, Eamon, aged three. Their grandmother had put $3,000 in their account for when they grow up and get older. Do you know what happened? That $3,000 was again cleaned out and reduced to zero. Their mother said, 'Who expects governments to raid the bank accounts of children?' That is what happened under the previous Labor government: they raided the bank accounts of children to pay for their reckless and wasteful expenditure, and they want to come back and have control of the treasury bench of this nation again. This is just incredible.

There is also a list of celebrities that had their bank accounts raided. There was Buddy Franklin. He had 520 bucks taken from his account. The tennis player Sam Stosur lost $1,219, Mark Bouris lost $200, and of course good old David Koch lost $2,033. The list goes on and on and on and on. In fact, today there are probably more than 100,000 Australians yet to discover that their money was taken by the previous Labor government.

How can we put this in some context? If we look at this in a historical context, I am confident in saying this is the second largest raid of bank accounts in the history of the world. I would like to go through a few of them. I have the top six raids of bank accounts in the entire world over history. Coming in at No. 6 was the Great Train Robbery in 1963, when 16 robbers stopped a train called the Night Flyer. The train was carrying high-value packets and banknotes being sent to numerous banks in London. A hundred and twenty of 128 mailbags were removed, and the robbers made off with $74 million.

Coming in at No. 5 was the Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery of 1987. Led by the famous Italian criminal of the time Valerio Viccei, the bank heist took place in July. The Knightsbridge Security Deposit was known to have famous clients and patrons and therefore valuable economic resources attractive to a cunning criminal. Once they had taken control of the bank, the already notorious bank robbers called for backup, and these guys ransacked and robbed the bank of $200 million in cash, jewellery and more.

Coming in at No. 4 of the biggest raids of banks in the history of the world was the robbery of the British Bank of the Middle East in 1976, when $210 million was taken. In the midst of the chaos of the civil war in Beirut, Yasser Arafat's PLO used brute force to gain access into the bank by blasting through a wall that was shared with a Catholic church. Using the help of Corsican locksmiths, they cracked the bank's vaults and got away with $20 million to $50 million in gold bars, cash, stocks and jewels, which is equivalent to $210 million today.

Coming in at No. 3 was the Dar es Salaam robbery of 2007, when $282 million was taken. The heist of the Dar es Salaam bank, located in Baghdad, is still considered one of the largest robberies in history. It happened during the war, when people took advantage of the bank's vulnerability. The money was stolen by security guards who slept at the bank overnight. When the employees came in the next morning to work, they found the front doors open, the vault doors ajar, the guards missing and the money gone.

The second biggest raid of bank accounts in the world's history was what should be described as the great Australian bank heist of 2013, when, in the dying days of the previous Labor government, $550 million was raided from 156,000 accounts of Australian citizens. This is the second biggest bank heist ever in world history.

Do you know what comes in at No. 1? The only one that could beat them was the Central Bank of Iraq robbery in 2003, of $920 million. Starting on 18 March, the day before the US began the bombing of Iraq, almost $1 billion was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq during the course of several robberies. It was undertaken by Saddam Hussein's son Qusay, who over five hours loaded the money onto trucks. The location of the money remains unknown, but since Saddam was the ruler at the time it is possible no laws were broken, though corruption was undoubtedly involved. These incidents executed by Qusay are still considered robberies and were viewed at the time as an attempt to hide the money that Hussein obtained unethically and stole from his citizens in the first place.

This is something that is unprecedented, not only in our nation but in the history of the world—for $550 million of people's money in their bank accounts to be raided. Is it any wonder that we cannot find on the speakers list a single member of the opposition? Looking through this legislation, they are probably all cowering under their desks in their offices. The chamber is completely empty, apart from the poor and lonely member for Parramatta sitting there at the dispatch box. Not a single other Labor member is in the chamber. Is it any wonder? I am sure they are hanging their heads in shame. They have claimed that they were actually trying to protect the accounts of people. So they wanted to take their money to protect it? What an absolute farce.

One of the most important things about a successful economy is that people have confidence in the banking system. We need a system of government where people can put their money in a bank account and not be fearful that the government will raid it and take it away from them. But that is exactly what happened during those Gillard-Rudd years—absolutely outrageous. We are fixing this. Once this legislation goes through, never again will a child's bank account be raided by a government. Grandparents and parents can put money in their children's accounts knowing that the government will not come in and raid it as they did before. Secondly, we are making sure that all of those who had their money taken and absconded with by the previous Labor government will get it back. We are putting in a system where people can go online and put their name in and check if their bank account was raided by the previous Labor government. I encourage everyone listening to parliament tonight to go to that website and put their name in, because there will be over 100,000 Australians who simply are yet to be aware that their bank accounts were previously raided by the Labor government.

This was an appalling piece of legislation. It is at least good to see the Labor Party have come to their senses and are supporting this legislation, which I understand. But it does not undo the shameful piece of legislation they brought into this parliament—the disgrace of raiding those bank accounts of Australian citizens. Ultimately, this goes back to a matter of trust. If the previous Labor government could not be trusted not to raid the bank accounts of Australians, if they reduced the time to a mere 36 months before they deemed money unclaimed and claimed it for themselves, they simply cannot ever be trusted to hold the Treasury bench again. This legislation is just one of the many pieces needed to clean up Labor's mess. I commend the legislation to the House.

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