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Monday, 18 June 2012
Page: 3494

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (20:11): The coalition support the Corporations Amendment (Proxy Voting) Bill 2012. In fact, we have been calling on the government for some time to finally introduce this standalone piece of legislation that will ensure that the chair at an annual general meeting can vote undirected proxies in a non-binding shareholder vote on remuneration matters where the shareholder granting the proxy has provided express authorisation. This bill fixes a problem that this incompetent and dysfunctional Labor government created with the changes it made in the Corporations Amendment (Improving Accountability on Director and Executive Remuneration) Bill 2011, which eliminated the ability of the chair at an AGM to vote undirected proxies, as we were later told, unintentionally.

The measure to fix this problem was originally included in the Consumer Credit and Corporations Legislation Amendment (Enhancements) Bill 2011, which was delayed due to the unanimous findings of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry that unrelated sections of that bill were flawed. The government refused to act on these findings for months and refused to split these proxy voting provisions from that bill, which has been stalled for months. We have, as I said, been calling on the government for some time to fix this and to introduce a separate bill to address this issue which the government has created. This government has been responsible for the delay of this important rectification on proxy voting. No-one other than this incompetent and dysfunctional Labor government can take the blame for this. We have offered for some time to pass this measure in an expedited fashion if it is split from the consumer credit bill. On that basis, we support this legislation today.