PETER STEFANOVIC:
Child sex abusers will be required to pay compensation to victims through their superannuation as the Federal Government cracks down on criminals who shield their assets inside their super funds. Joining us live now, the Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones. Good to see you, Stephen. Happy new year, by the way. So how is this going to work? How are you going to force offenders to pay victims?
STEPHEN JONES:
Look, this is – excuse me – this is a loophole that’s existed in our laws for some time now and it came to light in a particularly egregious case about eight or nine years ago where one convicted child sex offender managed to hide millions of dollars of his own wealth inside extraordinary contributions to his superannuation funds to avoid a court order to pay compensation to super – to pay compensation to victims. We want to shut that loophole down. We want to ensure that convicted child sex offenders cannot use superannuation – which was set up for retirement income purposes; not to shield criminals’ assets – so to ensure that we close the loopholes so any of these out of character contributions can be clawed back and used for the purpose of compensating victims if a court orders that.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. So how would it be clawed back, though? Would it have to be done voluntarily or would you have to get the police involved? How would you ensure that the payment is made?
JONES:
Yeah, good question. It would be done by a court order, Pete. So the laws that we’re proposing would enable a victim to make an application to the court in the process of seeking compensation to seek transparency on their offender’s superannuation account to see if they have made any of these out of character contributions. If they have, the court would be able to claw them back if compensation has been awarded and the payments haven’t been made.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Well, I can’t see why you wouldn’t get widespread support for this policy. When’s it going to be taken to parliament?
JONES:
Doing a short consultation period at the time to ensure that in trying to fix a problem we don’t create another one. So that’s the purpose of a discussion paper I’ve published today. But a short consultation process. It’s our intention to get this into the Parliament in the spring session so that we can clean this up and close down a longstanding loophole.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. Labour force data is out today. Minister, the expectation is that unemployment will be at the low of 3.4 per cent. Is that your expectation, and is it also your expectation that this will be about as low as it goes and that it will rise from here on in?
JONES:
Look, we typically see over the last quarter of a calendar year we see unemployment numbers drop – more casuals brought on – and that’s reflected in the numbers. We’re anticipating, look, at the low end of things, but, frankly, any person who is unemployed, any person who is looking for a job and can’t get one means there’s a job for government to try and create more work and a stronger economy to ensure people are finding their way into work. We do know that in the months ahead we’re facing some challenges as the impact of those interest rate rises slow the economy and are bringing down inflation. There is a risk that that has an impact on unemployment. We’re hoping we can navigate our way all the way through this. It’s a very narrow path to get through all of this with unemployment unaffected and the economy unaffected. We’re hoping that we can do that. But we do know that we’ve got some difficult times ahead.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay. On energy bills, at the moment New South Wales Treasurer Matt Kean, he wants to reserve 10 per cent of coal in the state. Do you support that?
JONES:
Look, I really actually don’t want to buy in to this one. I do note that we’re in the midst of an election campaign in New South Wales and there’ll be argument around energy policy. And from the Commonwealth Government’s point of view we want to ensure that the energy policy that we put in place and put through Parliament and through National Cabinet before Christmas which puts a cap on coal prices for domestic purposes and a cap on gas prices for domestic purposes starts to flow through so that we can bring down those massive increases we would have otherwise seen in energy prices. That’s the main game. If that objective can be bolstered by what is being proposed in New South Wales, well and good. But it wasn’t seen as something that we needed to do as a part of our energy plan.
STEFANOVIC:
It would make sense, though, wouldn’t it, to reserve a portion of coal for your own people?
JONES:
We support the proposition that Australia’s energy resources must serve the national interest first, whether it’s gas, whether it’s coal or any of our other energy resources. They must serve the national interest first. It does not make that Australians can’t get access to gas or coal for energy while we’re exporting it overseas. I’ve not seen any evidence of that in the area of coal, but perhaps the New South Wales Government has information available to them that’s not available to me that foresees that some time over the next year or two we will see shortages in those domestic markets. If that were the case then, of course, New South Wales coal should serve New South Wales energy users first.
STEFANOVIC:
Would a reservation policy be a better fix when it comes to gas, a better fix than price caps which are having teething problems at the moment?
JONES:
Look, we’ve looked at all of these – we’ve looked at all of the options. And on the best advice available to us the one that was going to have the most immediate impact was going to be the policy that we took through the Federal Cabinet and got agreement from states and territory leaders to. And that is one that puts in place a short-term price cap on both coal and gas in the wholesale markets to ensure that we got some immediate relief for those contracts that are about to be signed over the next 6 to 12 months, which would otherwise have seen an additional 20 per cent increase in those prices that would have flowed through to households but, more importantly, would have seen manufacturing businesses have to close their doors. That is not an outcome –
STEFANOVIC:
Right, but is it a flawed policy, though? Is it a flawed policy already though, because it’s not having an immediate impact? In fact, prices are going the other way – it’s getting more expensive.
JONES:
Well, all of the things that we’ve seen happen to date are the price increases that were banked in – that were baked in under Angus Taylor’s watch. What we’re seeing and what we’re experiencing in the market today are the energy price increases that are the result of Angus Taylor’s policy. What we’ve put in place is about what happens over the 12 months ahead of us now.
STEFANOVIC:
Well, it’s your policy, though. It’s not Angus Taylor’s policy.
JONES:
The prices were negotiated in the contracts today –
STEFANOVIC:
Because companies don’t know what to do.
JONES:
No, no, hear me out. Well, actually, there’s a bit of game playing going on now, but after yesterday it’s pretty clear, the gas companies have the information they need to sit down and negotiate these contracts. I can understand a bit of argy-bargy in the immediate aftermath of the policy announcement and the legislation. That was predictable. But it’s now time for the gas companies to act in the national interest and ensure that we can get some certainty. Policy is set – no more argument over policy. The policy is set. It’s done in the national interest. We wouldn’t have done it unless there was a crisis that had to be fixed. The crisis was not one that gas companies weren’t making enough profits; they’re making plenty of profits and will continue to make profits into the future.
STEFANOVIC:
Sure.
JONES:
But the crisis was that households were going to see another 20 per cent increase on top of the 20 per cent increases that were baked in under Angus Taylor’s policy. And that was not a future –
STEFANOVIC:
Okay, but you got households in New South Wales and Queensland now and even Victoria that are looking at price increases of upwards of 20 per cent from next month. So when will people – when will households start to see savings on their gas bills?
JONES:
We’d expect them to start to flow through in the next financial year. In fact, the contracts that are being signed now will be the contracts which will provide those energy price – that energy price relief. Look, it will be different, to be frank, manufacturer to manufacturer, gas user to gas user because they’ll all have different termination dates on their contracts. But we should start at least by – at the very least by the beginning of the next financial year, and in many, many cases sooner than that we’ll start to see some of those price – that price relief flow through.
STEFANOVIC:
Okay Stephen Jones, appreciate your time. Thank you. We’ll talk to you soon.