Page 2858 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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In June of last year, to my recollection, I provided advice to the Acting Corporate Affairs Commissioner in the ACT, a Commonwealth official, resulting from a search of records maintained of shareholders, directors and the rest. I wrote to him in these words:
I have no way of assessing the significance of this information or the claimed direct or indirect association. However, in my view, the events which led to the reserves of the society passing substantially into the hands of the above-mentioned shareholders and others, is clearly relevant to the current proposal before Canberra Building Society shareholders. In my view, the events of August 1988 or thereabouts should engage your Commission in terms of the Securities Industry Act.
The commission did hold an inquiry into the CBS takeover under section 36 subsection (1) of the National Companies and Securities Commission Act. It was held pursuant to section 13 of the Securities Industry Code, which provides that, where the commission has reason to suspect that an offence under a provision of a relevant code or against any other law with respect to dealings in securities, or an offence relating to securities that involves fraud or dishonesty, may have been committed, the commission may make such an investigation as the commission thinks expedient for the due administration of a relevant code.
I then found out that no offence was found to be disclosed. I was not told anything else as Attorney; there was a secrecy provision, of the type that I referred to yesterday in another debate. We never quite found out what happened and how those permanent shares went into the hands of those few directors and persons indirectly associated with them. In my view, there should have been an open public inquiry at the time, preceded by effective investigations of the type that have been used for other corporate concerns, particularly in Western Australia in recent years.
The fact is, as many dissatisfied residents of this Territory know, that the door has just about closed on that affair, and it is going to be very hard to revisit it, if it can ever be done. That went on under our own noses; it went on because we have this duplicated situation that leaves this Territory, with its limited investigative resources at high finance board level, to keep the cooperative societies under review. (Extension of time granted)
I would encourage the Chief Minister and the Attorney not to let the present situation lie. I would encourage the Attorney to get in touch with Mr Hartnell of the Australian Securities Commission to determine just how far we are operating within the current laws in terms of bills of sale, liens and other matters, and just what the Attorney
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