Clare O’Neil ducking and diving NPC debate on housing policy; Justice on horizon over Forex CT
Stuck in federal parliament at this very moment (thanks to an unlikely union between the Coalition and Greens) is the Albanese government’s marquee plans for housing reform, an issue that may well decide the forthcoming election.
Why wouldn’t it? There’s the desideratum of available supply, outsized demand and a lengthening queue of furious renters. Now add contiguous voter pressure-points such as overseas migration, cost of living and – yes, let’s reach for the dog whistle – foreign ownership.
All of which brings us to two Albanese government bills, both in stasis. One is called Help to Buy, and it will allow the government to co-purchase homes with about 40,000 first-time entrants to the market. The second policy would use tax cuts as an inducement to boost construction of rent-only developments.
Neither the Coalition nor the Greens look kindly on either of these proposals, which they’ve blocked, and you would think Anthony Albanese’s Housing Minister, Clare O’Neil, would seize any opportunity to publicly shame them for standing in the way.
Quite the opposite.
We hear O’Neil keeps wimping out of invitations (up to four, by our count) to debate shadow housing minister Michael Sukkar and the Greens’ Max Chandler-Mather at the National Press Club on November 26. Why? Unclear. She speaks in public about these policies all the time; her reasons on this occasion remain totally Delphic.
The National Press Club’s leadership has been in repeated contact with O’Neil’s office imploring the minister to join the event, while her people have been strangely insistent she won’t be getting on the stage.
Meanwhile, Sukkar and MMC needed no such cajoling; both were unfashionably eager to spin their wheels in front of the cameras at the NPC.
O’Neil’s absence on the billing certainly caused people to talk when the invitations were distributed a few days ago. When the minister doesn’t want to go near a debate on a signature government policy, just as Help to Buy is about to be reconsidered by the Senate, you might wonder, justifiably, if Labor’s solution to the housing crisis is shaping to be nothing more than a squawking, gobbling turkey.
Especially when O’Neil appeared at the John Cain Oration in Melbourne on Wednesday and summoned the courage to lambaste the “unholy alliance” between the Coalition and Greens on this very issue.
“The Greens’ political strategy is really clear,” she said, “they block and delay action on housing, then scream on social media that not enough is being done.” And what’s O’Neil’s strategy – sniping at Chandler-Mather from the safety of the State Library of Victoria.
Who would have thought Liberal stalwart Michael Kroger was actually right all this time when he said in 2016 that the Liberal Party could conceivably work with the Greens. It only took another eight years for this vision to make any sense.
“They’re not the nutters they used to be,” Kroger said, a remark we’re sure he regrets ever putting on record, especially whenever Adam Bandt opens his mouth. YB
Forex CT justice near
A little bit of justice on the horizon for victims of boiler room fraud Forex CT, after ASIC caved in to the demands of liquidators and handed back some of the fines imposed on the operation in the face of a lawsuit on behalf of former victims of the scam.
FTI Consulting took the unusual step of suing ASIC in February after the corporate watchdog vanished $20m in fines levied on Forex into government coffers without offering up a single cent as compensation to clients of the boiler room scam.
As a recap, Forex used high-pressure sales tactics to convince would-be day traders to risk their savings punting on complicated foreign exchange and derivatives contracts – which most unsuspecting punters didn’t have a hope of understanding, let alone understand well enough to make a winning bet.
Forex clients racked up about $77.5m in trading losses before ASIC stepped in to shut the boiler room down in 2020. And when the corporate regulator went to court, it won only $20m in financial penalties against the company and its directors after Forex and sole director Shlomo Yoshai “co-operated” with the prosecution – but that tally didn’t include any deal for compensation of the losses for its clients.
This, to be clear, is an outfit where supervisors rang a gong when sales staff convinced some poor mug to deposit another $10,000 in their trading account, hounded clients to keep trading even as they approached bankruptcy, and only decided to stop ringing one bloke because he’d lost his house and was living on the street. All under the cover of an Australian Financial Services Licence.
FTI took the legal action after failing to get Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones to make an offer to hand over the proceeds of the fines to compensate victims – though Jones’s lack of engagement would surprise absolutely nobody.
Instead they went to court, arguing that Forex’s victims were unsecured creditors and ASIC had given itself an unfair preference payment by shovelling the cash from the fines into Treasury’s general pot.
ASIC settled for $11.5m this week, we hear – hardly surprising given the legal precedent that might be set had FTI won its case. Enough for some money to flow back to Forex’s former clients, at least. NE
Not so healthy Saorsa
Saorsa Health boss Aiden Garrison has been a busy boy since we began speaking to aggrieved investors owed millions from his NDIS accommodation investment schemes.
When visiting Saorsa’s website on Friday we were shocked, shocked to discover he’d been busy scrubbing it clean of posts on a host of issues. Garrison’s own photo and bio has been deleted, along with any reference to Saorsa’s senior staff and advisory board.
A media release touting the appointment of two well-regarded health professionals as medical director and an executive have vanished, along with a second release on the appointment of a chief executive dating back only a few weeks – and the lady in question appears to have scrubbed any reference to Saorsa from her own LinkedIn profile.
Whatever can be going wrong over at Saorsa? NE
MinRes in game of cat and mouse
The Legal Practice Board of Western Australia is looking into MinRes and its lawyers’ conduct, which is interesting timing as its company secretary has just been made legal counsel to the board.
Both barrels for Super Retail, but just a popgun aimed at Nine
Ownership Matters boss Dean Paatsch didn’t waste time getting stuck into Super Retail for its cultural issues earlier this year, but has been a lot slower off the mark with Nine Entertainment.