Page 2862 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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Commonwealth and the States on what to do about unlisted property trusts, and a lot of investors could have been left with very little had there been a run, which was what was in the minds of the Commonwealth Treasurer and Attorney. They were able, using the uniform national law, to move instantly - or within hours - to avert that run and thus protect shareholders.
Mr Collaery was making the point that it is unfortunate that States and Territories are left with other peripheral areas of corporations and financial activities to control and that there is scope, by way of lack of uniformity, for citizens in States or Territories, and particularly in the ACT, to be less well protected if they deal with a particular type of financial institution than if they deal with bodies subject to national control.
It was heartening to me at my first meeting of the Ministerial Council on Companies and Securities, particularly from a background of having been involved in the corporations law battle in the High Court where the States were very jealously guarding their privileges of retaining every area of control of financial institutions that fell outside the realm of Commonwealth power, to note the mood that is about now, at the State and Territory level. The national company law exercise has been so successful and so clearly in the national interest that the States and Territories are now preparing to look at further expanding the ambit of Commonwealth power.
So, this need for national uniformity that Mr Collaery was talking about has, in fact, been recognised at the most recent ministerial council meeting, and there was a working party established to identify and examine State and Territory laws providing for the formation and incorporation of bodies such as building societies and credit unions, which are currently exempt from provisions of the corporations law, and to look at how the corporations law, as it presently applies, may apply to those bodies, the differences in existing jurisdictions in State and Territory control, and how we might further refer power to the Commonwealth to bring those bodies within the ambit of the single national company law structure and subject to the single regulatory body of the Australian Securities Commission.
The extent to which that progress has been made in the last 12 months is again, I think, a remarkable product of this era of cooperation that we seem to be in, exampled in last year's Special Premiers Conference. I am very hopeful that further progress can be made in this area, and there is no doubt that the mood in Australia is right for it. Again, we should try to keep out of partisan politics here, but there were obvious problems in Victoria with building societies. The law varies from State to State and the level of regulation control varies from State to State, and
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