Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a real pleasure to be able to make a contribution in relation to the government for vested interests and its latest foray into financial regulation. If you are a class action law firm or you are a union or you are a super fund, you are at the top of the list on the government for vested interests' priority list. If you are a punter, you go to the back of the queue, because this government is only interested in feathering the nests of vested interests. That is the log of claims that this minister, Mr Jones, has been working through since he assumed his role over six months ago.

We saw over the last few days Mr Swan, who is the President of the Labor Party but also the head of the CBUS super fund, say that he was going to commit $500 million of the members' money to a housing accord, which Senator Gallagher said in Senate estimates she didn't even know the detail of. So you have a housing accord policy with no detail, no assurance to the trustees about how their money would be protected and you have the person wearing two hats in Mr Swan falling over himself to promise the member's money. That is, of course, the best example that I can think of the howling conflicts which sit at the very heart of this government for vested interests.

But, of course, Senator Smith's contribution here is about Mr Jones. Mr Jones has already had a quadrella of failures in his attempt to regulate the financial markets. Last Friday we heard from Senator McKim, who had been done over by Mr Jones. He goes over to the other ministerial wing and does a deal which falls over pretty quickly and Mr Jones has, as a result of the deal falling over, killed his own financial regulation agenda, which is designed to improve the penalties which are applied to members of the financial sector who breach our laws. So that's fallen over and so has the compensation scheme of last resort, which Mr Jones promised at the last election. That is now on the never-never; we might not see that again. Then, of course, yesterday in this chamber, Mr Jones's key policy that he took to the election—the religious carve-out for super funds, which is a huge issue out there in the community and was the centrepiece of his policies—was excised by the government, was removed from the bill before the Senate.

We've also been able to canvass Mr Jones's failure to regulate the crypto sector. Back on 22 August, Mr Jones said in a Treasury media release that he was about to release public consultation on token mapping: 'It will be released soon.' That was on 22 August. Meanwhile we've had the FTX collapse, with 30,000 Australian consumers exposed to FTX. And what do you hear from Jones? Nothing from Mr Jones. He has failed to protect consumers there because there are probably no vested interests going into his office asking him to do things.

That takes me to the last point about Mr Jones's tremendous record here as the minister. His first act as minister was to remove transparency arrangements which would require the funds to show how much money they've sent off to a related party, be it a union or a bank or an insurance company or any related party. He has taken that away. That is his first priority; he comes into the job and says, 'I've got a great plan here; I'm going to take away the transparency that has been put in place because I don't want workers to see where their money is going.' That is his priority. That tells you all you need to know about this minister.

In terms of that particular regulation: I know Senator Lambie has a disallowance motion tomorrow, and the chamber will be able to make its own judgement on Mr Jones's judgement that the Australian people, workers and members of super funds should not be allowed to see when their funds are sending their money off to the CFMMEU, the Australian Workers Union and all the other unions which benefit greatly from superannuation funds.

It is a shocking tenure already for Mr Jones. He has fluffed the FAR bill, the religious carve-out is already dead and tomorrow he might in fact complete his trifecta and lose his super regs.