Page 2856 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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from the uniform companies law that had been developed. It is still my strong view that we have created a monster here. We have partly regulated the market and we have left some of the most strong, active and buoyant cooperative and credit union scenes outside the regulation of the Australian Securities Commission.
We as a nation will regret that, as the skills of the cooperative societies emerge. Of course, one has emerged in this Territory, and it is quite proper for me to note the market strength of the St George Building Society, ACT, and its announcement of results on 17 July 1991. I draw members' attention to the fact that St George's total assets in the ACT grew by a further 37 per cent to total $346.62m. And this is from a society that entered this market only in recent years.
Mr Speaker, I need to declare at this stage, under the self-government Act, that I have acted as a solicitor on occasion for that society. I simply state that. I do not believe that I am influenced in any way; and I have acted in that context only in relation to residential loans. So, I am familiar with the society and its entry to this market. It was a good event, because it added competition to a scene which had developed, in my view, not to the benefit of, particularly, the first home buyers. The St George portfolio of, on my calculation, $303m in residential loans suggests, on a quick calculation, that that society holds the deeds to probably 3,000 homes in this Territory. That society is a cooperative society. It will continue to be regulated under the cooperative societies legislation that we are debating today, and that is a happy event.
So that I can convince members of the need for us to agree to what is before us today, the background to this legislation is a situation that was, to our great shame as a Territory, described in the head financial article in the Sydney Morning Herald of Thursday, 21 June 1990, under the heading, "Skimming off the Cream in Canberra". It went like this:
The Attorney-General, Michael Duffy, hopes to lead Australia into a brave new world of honest directors and full corporate disclosure, but one of the most blatant examples of disregard for accepted levels of disclosure is going on under his nose in Canberra.
Referring to the takeover of the Canberra Building Society by the Advance Bank, the article said:
The bank appears to be taking the cream and leaving shareholders with the dud investments. Shareholders have to figure this out for themselves because it is difficult to tell from the morsels thrown at them by a contemptuous building society board.
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