Page 2857 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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I was Attorney during those times and I think it is appropriate that comment be passed upon the need for further reforms and the need for the Federal Government to rethink the decision to leave cooperative societies outside the Australian Securities Commission's purview I will give you an example why. Anomalies abound. Our Registrar of Titles registers bills of sale, liens over crops and wool and liens that result from various commercial dealings. Bills of sale, for the information of members, are more often lodged by motor car dealers in chattel sales.
It seems fairly clear to me that those documents are securities and that they come within the scope of the securities industry code which has been adopted as model legislation from the Securities Industry Act 1980 of this Territory, a Commonwealth Act at the time. I believe that some of the work being done in our Registry of Titles in fact should be under the supervision of the Australian Securities Commission. I am sustained in that view by looking at the definitions of securities, and I am worried by the preclusion in our self-government Act of "the regulation of securities" issues.
I think we have some work to do to rectify the mess that the Federal Government has left in the Territory, particularly through not looking through to the implications of this Territory being left with supervision of security dealings of that nature that are clearly swept up, in my view, in the modern legislation, and with the difficulty we are going to have in fully administering the Co-operative Societies Amendment Bill 1991.
Thank God the Canberra Building Society board has gone off the scene, but the fact remains that, although we do not have any issue of urgency at this stage in the Territory, those sorts of events and situations of that kind may require the type of investigative skills and follow-up capacity that the Australian Securities Commission, under the effective leadership of Tony Hartnell, has. We do not have it. We have to duplicate those skills somehow, through our Registrar of Cooperative Societies, to check on such dealings and the rest.
My experience as Attorney with the Corporate Affairs Commission of the day in this Territory was totally unsatisfactory. Due to a secrecy provision in the then National Securities and Companies Commission Act, I could not be told, as Attorney, about the nature of the inquiry that was in fact conducted, effectively behind closed doors, into issues affecting shareholding and dealings in the Canberra Building Society. I want to put some of those matters on the record so that we know fully why this legislation today is necessary.
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