Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Berowra for his question. One of the most extraordinary things about the conduct of the former government during the pandemic was that it found time to try to prevent access to justice for ordinary Australians who were wanting to sue large corporations, companies with much deeper pockets than them. In order to get access to justice, we have class actions.

You would think that a government that actually cared about ordinary Australians would not have done what the former government did during the pandemic, would not have found time during the pandemic to engage in the sort of nonsense that the former Treasurer, the former member for Kooyong, engaged in, which included not just the introduction of a requirement for Australian financial services licences for litigation funders but also an attack on the continuous disclosure regime which actually supports the raising of capital for all Australian companies. What an extraordinary thing for a Treasurer of this country to do! But that was one of the things that the former Treasurer engaged in. Another thing, as I have mentioned, was the introduction of an Australian financial services licence requirement for all litigation funders. The extraordinary thing—

See this speech in context