Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate Senator Sterle on that presentation and for his thoughts. I have to say I think he is 100 per cent correct. My only concern is that I hope the committee's report has some reasonable resolutions in it that can be adopted. I just shrug my shoulders and say, 'What can you do?' I do not think that government regulation can make people pay their bills. If people do not have the money to pay their bills then I do not know what you can do about it, and that is the problem. In business, as Senator Sterle would know, it is, 'Let the buyer beware.' I remember in my own profession, when I left it 25 years ago, we used to send everyone bills, but I understand modern lawyers all get the money up front. Most businesses do these days, particularly with the advent of credit cards. Businesses, quite rightly, say now, 'Look, we're not a bank; we're here to retail a product or a service, so take your credit card and sort out with the bank whether you can pay it or not.'

Notwithstanding that, Senator Sterle is right and the committee report is correct in a number of instances where people are not paid for all the wrong reasons. Again, I relate a personal experience where it actually got me and where the phoenixing that Senator Sterle talked about, I think, has happened. There was a group of Sydney 'entrepreneurs' who came to Townsville to build a high-rise right opposite my office. I thought, 'That looks good, and in 20 years or so when I retire from the Senate I would not mind living there,' so I bought off the plan. Halfway through they changed the design of my unit, whereupon I took them to court. I am confident that I would have won, because it was a blatant breach of the contractual arrangement, but I spent about $20,000 to $30,000 on lawyers and barristers and reports, and before I could get them to court the company went broke; the Sydney company that was building this high-rise went into liquidation. The building had almost been completed. But I was denied having my day in court and I was denied recovering the tens of thousands of dollars I had paid in legal fees, which I could have recovered had we gone to court. Yet I am very confident that the people involved in that group are back in business in Sydney under an assumed name. It was okay for me. I cannot afford it, but it impacted far less on me than I know it impacted upon a lot of other people who are dealing with the same company.

But how you deal with that I do not know. I do think that we need a complete revision of the insolvency laws in Australia. Perhaps this report of the committee may be a step going forward—a starting step in the need to consider seriously the reform of insolvency in this country.