RAY HADLEY:
Treasury has today released a discussion paper for consultation that outlines two complimentary proposals that would provide for the release of an offender's superannuation for the purpose of satisfying unpaid compensation orders. These proposals will close a loophole that's causing further harm to victims by denying them court awarded compensation. Child abuse survivors and their advocates have long campaigned for their changes. The government will act quickly to close the loophole. Under the proposal, certain super contributions made by an offender in the lead‑up to criminal proceedings would be made available to the victim in the purpose of paying compensation. Courts could be entitled to access ATO data about offenders' superannuation accounts, giving transparency to victims of their assets. Together, these changes will leave offenders no place to hide the assets. Now, there’ll be a consultation process up until the 16th of February, and I'm indebted to Stephen Jones, the Minister for Financial Services, Assistant Treasurer, for making good on his promise last year to move forward with it. Minister, good morning to you.
STEPHEN JONES:
Good to be with you, Ray. Important issue. We've got to close this loophole down.
HADLEY:
So, the discussion paper, you're what? Calling for people to look at it or people involved or does this just proceed after you've published the paper? What happens next?
JONES:
Look, I think when we had a chat in December, I said I didn't want to create one – I didn’t want to fix one problem and create another one.
HADLEY:
Sure.
JONES:
So we've gone away, looked at the proposals, laser-focused on what we want to achieve here: stop the criminals hiding their assets in super. So got Treasury to work on two tight proposals. We're sending them out for consultation over the course of the next three weeks just to ensure that we haven't forgotten something or left a loophole there. Off the back of that feedback, we'll get some laws drafted and have them into Parliament within the first three months.
HADLEY:
And you'll get cooperation from the Opposition, that's for sure and certain, because they started the ball rolling, and then you're keeping it rolling, which is fantastic news. So it will be either one of the proposals or a combination of two perhaps, depending on what you toss up?
JONES:
Yeah, look, I think they're both necessary, Ray. The first is giving the court the power to claw back the money.
HADLEY:
Right.
JONES:
But as a complement to that, we want to ensure the victims have got access to the information so that they know if this egregious behaviour has occurred, so that requires us to pass a new law to allow the court to order access, if you like, to certain information that the tax office holds about those contributions.
HADLEY:
Okay.
JONES:
So they can go back and have a look at what's occurred over the last 12 months, two years. Have there been any out of character dodgy business gone on? If there has, they can get access to that information and make an application to the court to have the debt paid.
HADLEY:
Okay. Given this all started, in the main, with the multimillionaire paedophile Maurice Van Ryn in Bega, and he's incarcerated for a long time, as the bastard should be! But he's the one that's stashed it all away. Is there any way - and I understand your difficulty in this position - of making this law retrospective so those victims of that horrible, low, filthy dog can be, in some way, compensated financially for the crimes he committed against them?
JONES:
Yeah, going to get legal advice on that about whether that's possible or not. There are some sort of constitutional barriers in some of this stuff.
HADLEY:
Okay.
JONES:
So, I don't want to give myself legal advice. I'll get better legal advice than I can give myself and we'll see whether those sorts of things - I think when we last spoke, I said as a general rule of thumb, the Commonwealth Government doesn't do retrospective, but there are exceptions to that rule, and this may be one of them.
HADLEY:
Yeah, look, in real terms, I probably don't do retrospective myself, but when it comes to Maurice Van Ryn, I do retrospective.
JONES:
You make a good point.
HADLEY:
I hope that the Solicitor-General and others who'll advise you, would agree with this. But I appreciate what you've done in a very short space of time and we'll stay in contact at the end of the process coming into February. Thanks very much.
JONES:
Good to talk, Ray. Cheers.