Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Business Registries Stabilisation and Uplift) Bill 2026. As a starting point, the coalition is broadly supportive of this bill. We will not oppose it in the House, so there can be a proper consideration by a Senate inquiry. This bill is obviously going to keep Australia's business registers operating. Business registers are a core piece of economic infrastructure. Businesses, lenders, consumers, journalists and regulators rely on them, as you know, Mr Speaker, every day. We support keeping these systems stable, accurate and usable.

The coalition supports director ID. It was a coalition reform. Director ID improves transparency. It helps tackle phoenixing. It helps regulators track directors across companies, and around three million directors have already obtained one. Linking director IDs to ASIC company records is sensible. On protecting directors, though, when you start to make information public, there are obviously protections that we want to put in place. While we want these transparency things to be in place for directors, there is, as I said, phoenixing. I understand phoenixing is when a director might be involved in a company that implodes—or there might even be some fraudulent, or allegedly fraudulent, activity—and then, when that company goes to the ashes, they literally rise out of the ashes and start a company doing the same thing. We want to keep track of that and have more transparency around that. But our support for director ID does not mean we want to give up on privacy. Company directors deserve proper protections. We do not want home addresses, for example, to be freely available. Directors should not be exposed to identity theft. They should not be exposed to coercion or personal safety risks. The Senate inquiry should test—this is one of the reasons why we support the inquiry—whether the bill gets this balance right or whether more protection is needed.

The bill includes strict liability offences. These apply where information is not provided or updated, and that may be unfair in some cases. A company may take reasonable steps to comply, but a director may fail to provide the required information, and a reasonable steps defence should be considered as part of the Senate inquiry.

On broader concerns about ASIC—just as a little bit of a segue here—while these reforms are important, we also want more direction given to ASIC. ASIC have a big job to do and have many competing priorities. There've been a lot of recent high-profile financial failures—First Guardian, Shield, Lion Property Group and others—and these failures raise serious concerns about consumer protection, enforcement and early intervention. We want the government to give far more clear direction to ASIC.

The Treasurer's been in this job for four years. He has still not issued his statement of expectations for ASIC or the tax office. ASIC is still operating under the statement of expectations issued in 2021 by then treasurer Josh Frydenberg during the COVID recovery period. This needs to be updated. Statements of expectations are meant to give regulators clarity about government objectives and priorities, and we think the Treasurer is failing to set updated and clear expectations for them and for the ATO as well.

In closing, we on this side of the parliament are always looking to be constructive. We will support keeping registries operating. We support director ID and we support practical reform, but we will use the Senate inquiry to test some of the finer details around this, and we'll always look to hold the Treasurer to account if he's not doing his job.

Debate adjourned.