Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Cook on his contribution to this debate on the Corporations (NZ Closer Economic Relations) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2007. Observers of this parliament rarely note the effective working relationships within the House. The relationship that the member for Cook and I have developed as we have undertaken various mutual responsibilities goes back a long way. I have enormous respect for him as a member of this House and it is not diminished in the least by the contribution he just made. This measure is to be welcomed. I go back in my parliamentary service nearly 20 years. One of the first committees on which I served was the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which undertook a visit to New Zealand in, I think, 1987, following the 1983 initiation of the closer economic relationship agreements that we had entered into. Those agreements led to improvements and streamlining of the relationship. They are sensible agreements and continue to be improved and streamlined as we proceed.

Historically there are reasons why those in New Zealand, in their entitlement as a sovereign nation, have decided upon quite a different set of arrangements for the registration of companies and the management of corporate administration to those in Australia. In many ways it would have been more convenient if we had adopted the same set of arrangements, but people in New Zealand regard theirs as preferable and we in Australia proceed in our own manner. This legislation finds an effective way of allowing those who wish to undertake corporate activity between the two countries to do so with the least degree of complexity, given that there are different regulatory regimes in both countries. I hope over time that we can bridge this divide even further.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs—which I am a member of and which is chaired by the honourable member for Fisher—recently recommended in a report further steps towards closer integration of our relationship with New Zealand. That relationship not only is embedded in the economic areas that the member for Cook has mentioned but also extends into a whole range of other areas where our countries have mutual interests. In the area of law enforcement, New Zealand ministers serve as members of our ministerial councils on law enforcement. We have effective relationships in policing, and health ministers from Australia and New Zealand also meet. It is a historical anomaly that our relationships are not even more intimate. In the early days before the adoption of our federal compact, New Zealand was an eligible colony to have federated as part of the Commonwealth of Australia but did not take that step. A part of the recommendations made by the honourable member for Fisher is that we do, over time, explore the possibility of not only having economic relationships and better and more effective relationships in a whole range of areas where we already have ministerial exchange but also political integration at a more fundamental level.

It is difficult not to be seen to be a little bit Big Brotherish in relation to this matter. Australia does have a larger population than New Zealand, the economy that it possesses is larger than New Zealand’s and the direction of its political structures has perhaps diverged even since the time when federation was first put on the table. It is a peculiarity, I suppose, that, as we become a much more centralised federation than we were in 1901, the attraction for New Zealand of joining the federation would be less because the degree of freedom of the federal entities within the Commonwealth of Australia has been considerably reduced over the last 100 years. And it is no disrespect to the High Court of Australia to observe, as both Justice Callinan and Justice Kirby did, that the manner in which the Constitution has been read in a contemporary way has permitted the central government to exercise a wider range of powers than would have been imaginable by those who first framed that compact.

So, in a sense, whilst we are moving closer in terms of a recognition that we have a common interest, economically, politically and socially, with New Zealand, perhaps the threshold to get over in terms of political integration is greater because the degree of freedom of the federal components of that national government are much less than they were in the past and therefore perhaps much less attractive to any potential New Zealand administration that might believe that there would be, in the long term, some benefit in closer political harmonisation. Those are large philosophical issues that cannot be embraced, other than by mention, in this debate, but I think they do repay some reflection on our part.

One of the things that I would hope this parliament and those who are responsible for decisions on how we proceed in our region eventually grapple with is this: I think there is a good case to be made that we should also have a constant exchange between parliamentarians, like the exchange between the ministers of our two countries. It does seem to me a little anachronistic that we as parliamentarians do not share the same closeness between our parliaments as those holding executive office. And I think it is an unhealthy thing, from a point of view of parliamentary democracy, that that is not the case.

One of the points raised in the report of the committee inquiry chaired by the honourable member for Fisher was the need to establish effective means whereby Australian parliamentarians can routinely participate in mutual deliberations with their New Zealand counterparts so that we enrich the relationship, so that, in our various deliberations, we do not stumble upon difficulties that could be avoided and so that, where we do have differences, we can put in place, by way of common interests, harmonious means of overcoming them.

Those are the only remarks I have. I have no objection to the terms of the minister’s second reading speech, which covers the reasons for our support of this legislation. It does mean that New Zealand entities that wish to issue securities in Australia can do so. It means that we can have mutual recognition of companies in both countries. It also means that our regulators, in particular those looking to deal with anticompetitive behaviour, can exchange information so that we can minimise the degree of difficulty that is caused by both national entities—for their own perfectly understandable reasons—having divergent corporation laws. It gives us a means of avoiding undue complexity—which, I must say, has in the past been a considerable stumbling block.

We did take evidence in the past—though I cannot remember precisely which committee I was serving on when we did—on the regulatory difficulties that were experienced because arrangements for recognition of the different corporate structures that existed in the two countries were not in place. There was evidence that the means of issuing securities in the two countries were complex and required very different approaches by way of disclosure and that we did not have an effective means of having a common regulator for anticompetitive behaviour. So these measures, whilst they do not bring the substantive law into exact parallel, at least provide us with an effective means of minimising the inconvenience that would otherwise be inherent.

In conclusion, I will go back to the point I made when I commenced by saying that the contribution made by the member for Cook really does reflect the wealth that this parliament has, on both sides, of members interested in the national interest and not in pursuing differences for the sake of it in these kinds of debates. In this instance, the opposition not only is content to not oppose the legislation but actively supports the intent of the legislation, sees it as a practical advance and wishes it all success.

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