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 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.
Mortgage stress now grips 42 per cent of Australian households, according to a UNSW City Futures Research Centre survey. This is a sharp increase from 30 per cent in February 2020. The UNSW survey defines mortgage stress as households with less than 5 per cent of residual household income left over after paying normal household expenses, including on housing.
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?
