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:
The suffering endured by the elderly tenants scammed by the Sterling First rent-for-life scheme is finally getting political attention, opening up the possibility of a Senate inquiry. Such an inquiry is absolutely necessary, to expose how the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) allowed Sterling directors, with a history of ripping off investors in failed financial schemes, to prey on vulnerable elderly Australians.
How many politicians will stand by while the Treasurer and corporate regulator deliberately unleash the big banks and all other financial predators onto unsuspecting Australians?
What does it take to get financial justice in Australia? That’s the question posed by the Citizens Party’s Citizens Insight interview with bank victims Wayne Ditchburn and Rowena Hardy, who endured 12 years of living hell to force their bank to settle their case.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s appointment of former Macquarie Bank CEO Nicholas Moore to oversee Australia’s financial regulators proves that Kenneth Hayne must have been able to see the future.
