Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 1) Bill 2021, contains the latest example of the government using a global pandemic as cover to wind back protections for consumers and workers for the benefit of big corporations and the superwealthy. They did it when they watered down workplace protections for casual workers earlier this year. They're trying to do it with the proposed repeal of responsible lending obligations and, with schedule 2 of this bill, the government are at it again. This time they're trying to water down the requirement for companies to continuously disclose information that is material to their valuation. It's a cynical ploy. If Australians want to understand why the government seem to find it so difficult to get on top of the pandemic then the likes of this bill help to explain why. Instead of a shoulders-to the-wheel effort to get the vaccine into peoples' arms, instead of properly managing our country's quarantine system to try and stop the virus coming in and spreading in the first place and instead of developing an off-the-shelf program of income support payments for the rolling series of lockdowns that government themselves predicted in the last budget, instead of doing those things which are absolutely critical to our management of the pandemic and to our economic recovery, the government have been focusing their efforts on using the pandemic as a cover to try to give their big corporate donors a bigger slice of the pie.

Markets are meant to work on the basis of equal access to information. I could barely credit that I have to give this lecture to the Liberal and National parties, but I do. Markets are meant to work on the basis of equal access to information. This is given effect in Australia by laws, amongst other things, requiring continuous disclosure of information that is material to the valuation of a company, good or bad.

Senator Scarr interjecting—

I will take that interjection. A lot is changing. In theory, laws requiring continuous disclosure of information that's material to the valuation of a company creates a level playing field that benefits investors and businesses alike. I can barely credit having to give this lecture to the Liberal and National parties, but here we all are.

This is based on the principle, as I said, that markets work best when everyone has equal access to information. It's the kind of thing the Liberal Party was built on. That's how core this is to the Liberal and National parties. Free and fair markets are supposedly a foundational principle of the Liberal Party, and it's such a foundational principle of the Liberal Party this they've spent the best part of the last 40 years trying to convince themselves and the Australian people that markets are the answer to every problem.

Those of us in the Australian Greens understand that markets are not the answer to every problem. In fact, to go even further, we understand that markets have created many of the massive challenges that we are facing today, including the breakdown of our climate and including the destruction of biodiversity and nature. But, despite all their rhetoric, the Liberal and National parties have come in here today with a bill that is a direct assault on the integrity of the Australian equities market and the wealth of ordinary Australians, who depend on the fair and efficient functioning of that market. So keen is the government to cosy up to big finance and the forces of global capital that they are willing to sell out the mum and dad investors who bought in on John Howard's promise of Australia being 'The greatest shareholding democracy in the world.' How times have changed.