Page 1910 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 June 1994
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The Treasurer says that ACT taxpayers will bear no financial burden as a result of the Bill. I presume that we can set aside for the moment the cost to the ACT taxpayer of enacting this Bill and bringing it to this point so that it can be passed. There must have been a cost associated with that. I wonder how many people in the legislative drafting section spent time preparing the Bill. She says that the Bill will assist customers of the State Bank of South Australia by relieving them of the need to renegotiate existing agreements with the Bank of South Australia Ltd, and she says that transactions in the ACT necessary for the restructuring of the bank are exempt from ACT charges. That sounds good, on the face of it; but she obviously expects us to take these matters on trust. If any ACT customer has to pay to comply with the bank's restructuring in any way, I presume that the Treasurer will have the good grace to take immediate action in this Assembly to provide retroactive relief to that person or that corporation. I am confident, however, that the ACT itself will not be imposing any such charges; but perhaps what the bank's clients in the ACT do need is a second layer of protection ensuring that no other government will impose any costs on the bank's customers here for any transactions that are necessary to complete the bank's corporatisation.
I said that we support the Bill, and we do; but there is a great deal about it that we do not know. It really is not good enough to say that the South Australian Government needs this legislation. We are not responsible to the South Australian Government; we are responsible to the people to whom this Bill relates and who live here. It would be useful if the Chief Minister and Treasurer could tell us a little bit more about them and what their obligations and responsibilities might be that this Bill protects them from.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (8.22), in reply: I thank Mr Kaine for his comments. As members will be aware, the purpose of this Bill that we are examining this evening is to facilitate the sale of the State Bank of South Australia and to enable its corporatisation. That has been decided by the South Australian Government. As Mr Kaine said, the State Bank of South Australia got into severe difficulties a couple of years ago. I well recall being at the Premiers Conference when the Commonwealth Government proffered to the South Australian State Government a rescue package of some $600m to try to ease them out of this problem with the State Bank. There has been a change of government and this asset, or liability, as it might be to South Australia, is now to be corporatised and sold. That is a decision for the South Australian Government. It is probably a decision that would never have been taken by the ACT Government. We would not have allowed a bank, an asset of ours, to get into such dire straits, and we would not have contemplated this kind of a privatisation proposal. The policy, as I say, has been decided by South Australia, and they have asked for the assistance of other governments around the country in achieving their objectives. I believe that it is entirely reasonable for this Territory to proffer what assistance we can.
I would like to address some of Mr Kaine's specific issues. In the first place, Madam Speaker, the assets to be transferred in this Territory amount to some $232m. That is the order of the issue that we are dealing with here. That is a significant amount. That money is by way of advances to corporate customers, as Mr Kaine has said. They are secured by mortgage debentures or other forms of security. They are all corporate structures. As members would know, there is no branch of the South Australian State Bank in the ACT, so there is not the normal day-to-day household banking and exposure by ordinary people like you and me with our pay and our own
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