Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

No, that is not true. As Senator Tillem suggested in his question, the only reason Labor imposed that bit of red tape into the legislation was that the industry super funds movement wanted it. The Ripoll inquiry, which investigated the collapse of Storm Financial, did not recommend it, and out of the more than 400 submissions only one submission asked for it, and that was the submission from Industry Super. Of course Mr Shorten, who was the minister at the time, cannot have been very confident that the cost-benefit equation of that bit of red tape stacked up, because he refused to comply with his own government's requirements when it came to regulatory impact assessments. Minister Wong was supposed to be the guardian, through the Office of Best Practice Regulation, of ensuring that ministers across government go through proper processes to assess that the cost-benefit equation stacks up. Bill Shorten did not do it because he knew he was just imposing additional costs without additional benefits.