Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sometimes I wonder what the point is of us all flying down to this bush capital and making laws, because so many of the laws that have been made are not enforced, whether that be about incitement or—

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We feel like it's pretty good!

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm glad Minister Ayres thinks law enforcement is tremendous. I make the point that it's disorderly to interject in a two-minute statement, which is not about politics, but I guess he can't help himself. It's all a big game to him.

The point is that I'm very surprised that the government doesn't care about consumers. Senator Walsh and I spent over a year conducting an inquiry into ASIC, which found that, in fact, its law enforcement was pretty deficient and Australians were losing their life savings because of appalling failures by ASIC, including in some cases where they had received warnings which they had lost—or the dog had eaten! Now we find, after 15 months, that the Treasurer has had this ASIC report sitting on his desk and he hasn't bothered to respond to it. Many colleagues across the aisle will be aware that there is another slew of financial collapses where Australians have lost a lot of money—First Guardian, Shield, Lion. People have lost a lot of money here, and it is because of porous law enforcement, which apparently the government doesn't care about, because they won't look at the enforcement record of the corporate crop. Minister Ayres thinks it is all a big joke, but it's not a big joke to the people who have lost their life savings or lost mental health because of lax law enforcement. So we expect better from the government. We want the government to do better, and we look forward to the government doing better for these Australians.