Page 2855 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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understand what Burley Griffin set out to do. But what happened? An avenue of this fair city was sold off to developers under a complacent Federal Labor government. To that extent I exclude from my criticisms those good Labor supporters who ranged from feeling uneasy about it to publicly opposing it, like John Langmore did.
There was a time in this city when power had aggregated to the very few. This Bill is a reminder to all of us of those years. Under public pressure, former Minister for Territories Gary Punch said, on 18 August 1988, that he would provide a proper takeover code within the cooperative societies arena. That promise was repeated and affirmed again by Clyde Holding, the responsible Minister at the time, on 1 December 1988. But it was not done. It was never done. When the self-government Act was drafted and passed, we were precluded, under section 23 paragraph (1)(h) of the Act, from having power to make laws as a sovereign legislative body with respect to a number of matters, including companies, close corporations, foreign companies, the acquisition of shares in bodies corporate and, significantly, the regulation of the securities industry and the futures industry.
That was done because our excellent legal minds across the lake already knew that there would possibly be a High Court challenge to the constitutionality of the Commonwealth's other intentions. Mr Connolly nods. I bet he could tell us a little bit of oral history too. So, this was a backup, and it turned out to be a great piece of legal foresight, because, of course, as members well know, the High Court did knock out significant aspects of the Federal Corporations Legislation Amendment Act. To overcome that legal difficulty, the Commonwealth decided to use its powers to pass legislation within the Territory that would become State supplied by the other States.
In a heads of agreement document, concluded in Alice Springs on 29 June 1990 - whilst I waited outside the door, having been excluded from the meeting - all sovereign governments in this country agreed to a national scheme of corporate regulation. That left unresolved an overlap with the regulation of building societies, cooperatives and associations associated in that arena. It was left to another meeting in Sydney at a later date to decide on the question of what to do with the regulation of cooperative societies, particularly in the context of the Pyramid Society collapse in Geelong in Victoria at the time.
Of course, the ACT had very relevant and direct experience in attempting to regulate cooperative societies. I will come back to that issue in a moment. All I want to say on that meeting is that there was not unanimity within the nation on the wisdom of excluding cooperative societies
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