The financial security of all Australians is at stake today, with the beginning of the Senate Economics References Committee’s hearings into the collapse of Sterling First.
The Victorian government’s new Pandemic Management Bill must be amended to limit the powers it bestows on the government to rule by decree. As Victorian Bar Association President Christopher Blanden wrote in a 27 October Open Letter: “It is one thing to allow temporary rule by decree to deal with an unforeseen and extraordinary emergency in circumstances of extreme urgency.
The current Senate inquiry into the Australian Security and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) handling of the Sterling First collapse is not off to a good start.
Following more than two years of mental anguish which claimed 16 lives, the elderly Sterling First tenants who are victims of ASIC have succeeded in achieving their first goal of a Senate inquiry. On Wednesday this week, 20 October, the Labor Party moved a motion from WA Labor Senator Louise Pratt for an inquiry, which passed unopposed.
Senator Pratt’s motion read:
