Page 3534 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
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MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, Mr Humphries's question presents me with certain difficulties, and they relate to the extent to which I breach Mr Reeks's privacy and let this house into a whole lot of details of Mr Reeks's behaviour, antecedents and dealings with the Credit Tribunal. Mr Reeks has chosen to go public on this. He has made all sorts of highly partisan attacks on the Labor Government. But I will avoid the temptation to go too deeply into it. Suffice it to say that the documents are documents relating to a person's private business application. I am not going to table them here. They show that Mr Reeks has repeatedly refused to provide information that he is required to provide. He has either not provided it or consciously refused to provide it. He has provided information that has turned out to be wrong, and we have had to go back to him and get these things clarified.
I did use a loose term; I said a "credit licence". It is a statutory permission to engage in a broking service as a principal, not an employee. Dealing in such a manner is a very responsible issue. We do have probity checks; we do have checks on background; we do want to ensure that we are not letting people into this area willy-nilly. We take our responsibilities to protect consumers very seriously. I can assure Mr Humphries and any other business person in Canberra that, if they are full and frank and provide the information required in a timely manner, their applications will be dealt with in a timely manner. When we have to keep going back to them and saying, "Look, you have refused to answer this question", et cetera, et cetera, backwards and forwards, it does take a little longer.
I was most alarmed, I must say - and, obviously, this will be looked at - at Mr Reeks's statement on radio that, while he does not have his licence, he is conducting the business on somebody else's licence. I hope that he meant that he is an employee, although he said, "I am having to pay 30 per cent of my profits to the bloke whose licence I am operating", because, if he did not mean "I am an employee", he meant that he is ghosting on somebody else's licence; and, in credit, building or any other area, ghosting on somebody's licence is an undesirable practice. In many cases it is illegal; but certainly it is very undesirable and something which I am sure that Mr Humphries would not condone.
On the documents that I have seen and the information that I have been provided with, Mr Reeks is, to a very large extent, the author of his own problems, because he has chosen not to give information that he is required to give; he has given information that we have had to go back to him on and say, "It is wrong". We could have, at those points where he gave wrong information, just said, "No; you are out". But we came back and said, "No; look, we are trying to help you. You have to provide us with this", backwards and forwards. The matter will go before the tribunal in due course. That impartial body will make whatever decision it makes. It is not for me to comment on what decision they may make when apprised of all the facts.
Mr Humphries is trying to say that it takes eight months to deal with a simple process. It does not. Business people who provide the information that they are required to provide and cooperate in this sort of probity check are dealt with much more rapidly. It is going to take people who choose not to give information a bit longer.
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