Peter Georgiou (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

This amendment includes valuers, investigating accountants and receiver managers in the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, AFCA, scheme. Bank appointed valuers, investigating accountants and receiver managers act in a largely unsupervised environment. Misconduct in this sector has been raised in numerous past government and Senate inquiries. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has recommended changes, and so have various other inquiries.

If we are serious about stopping white-collar and banking misconduct in Australia, we should support these changes, and we call for your support to do this with us. The problem is that the new AFCA, in its current form, will not investigate misconduct by bank appointed valuers, investigating accountants and receiver managers. The Financial Ombudsman Service, FOS, will not investigate cases of misconduct by valuers or accountants or receivers, even when the bank is aware that there has been misconduct. AFCA will be the same under the existing proposals. So, in some respects, it is a toothless tiger. As an example, I have a letter from FOS showing they will not investigate because, once the receiver is appointed, the receiver acts as an agent for the company and not the person who appointed it. In other words, the bank could appoint the most corrupt and incompetent receiver and be aware of misconduct and yet be totally unaccountable. The ombudsman cannot help unless the bank gives the regulator permission to investigate the crime. In the example submitted, Bankwest informed FOS that it is not prepared to waive the issues that may exist to enable a fresh dispute to be considered by FOS. So, if the bank wants to prevent an investigation, it can do so with a loophole in the legislation.

To add insult to injury, if the damage caused by the misconduct is greater than the limit of FOS, it can fall outside the jurisdiction. This limit could encourage greater misconduct. To avoid investigation, a bank or the agent has to ensure that they create a level of damage above the limit. With the banking royal commission now underway and further cases of misconduct being exposed, now is the time to strengthen legislation and regulate this troubled industry. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has confirmed in discussions that there is very little regulation on these banks and appointed entities. They admit that, in some cases, receivers just refuse to provide details of their work to the owners of companies they are appointed over. They often charge hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for their work, with no accountability for what they have done. We have seen cases where receivers have employed the same lawyers the banks employed and then they act for the companies they are the receiver over—a conflict of interest in itself—and then they refuse to disclose to the owners and companies what the lawyers have done.

I refer to a letter from the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to Senator Jane Hume, Chair of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, dated 29 September 2017. It reads: 'Despite the welcome step of establishing AFCA, we believe there are important considerations which are still missing from the jurisdiction of the proposed authority, namely the role of third party agents such as valuers, investigating accountants and receivers.' The ombudsman's inquiry report into small-business loans dated 12 December 2016 made a series of recommendations, including recommendation 13 that:

External dispute resolution schemes must be expanded to include disputes with third parties that have been appointed by the bank, such as valuers, investigative accountants and receivers …

Current state

(a) between a small business and a third party such as valuers, investigative accountants and receivers appointed by the bank

…   …   …

The only alternative for small business in these cases is the court system, yet:

Recommended change

That the independent EDR—

external dispute resolution

one-stop-shop—

that is, AFCA—

have jurisdiction to consider disputes between small businesses and banks, where disputes relate to the conduct of third parties appointed by banks.

This clearly indicates that our amendments need to be supported. The Australian small business ombudsman said:

The Australian small business ombudsman would support legislative changes to the AFCA to make banks responsible for the conduct of their appointed valuers, investigative accountants and receivers.

The LNP have argued that these changes are unconstitutional. However, the Senate Procedure Office have said they can't see any constitutional problems with this amendment and they believe it is compatible with corporations law. Also under section 51, heads of power, banks, financial institutions and service providers are covered federally. We have run this by the Parliamentary Library. They have advised that our amendment is a solution to the issues raised by the ombudsman and they cannot see any constitutional reason why it can't work. The government objects to this amendment on the basis that it is unconstitutional. We have repeatedly asked the government to identify any reasons that this amendment may be unconstitutional and they have failed or refused to clarify these reasons. The only explanation can be that this amendment in fact is constitutional.

This amendment needs to be supported if we want to help those affected by bank misconduct. Given the bank and receiver misconduct covered by numerous past government inquiries and the misconduct now being revealed by the banking royal commission, we request the Senate support the proposed constructive changes to bring this largely unregulated sector under control. This chamber should take the word of the Parliamentary Library, the ombudsman and the Senate Procedure Office ahead of a government who would rather protect their banking mates.