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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-05 Daily Xml
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Company Directors' Obligations

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (14:27): My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer please update the house on the importance to the state's economy of corporations meeting their obligations?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer) (14:27): I am grateful to the member for Elder for her question. Thriving companies and corporations are the backbone of our economy. They deliver significant economic output in South Australia, they employ the vast majority of workers in our state and they support many thousands of suppliers of both goods and services. They rely on a stable regulatory environment, access to capital and skilled labour and they also need to be well led.

Those responsible for leading corporations and companies have a significant responsibility to our community. Given the importance of their role, it's crucial that they meet their obligations as company directors for several reasons. They have to meet their obligations, including paying their taxes, paying their suppliers, paying their workers and providing for employee entitlements, amongst other responsibilities.

Those company directors and their obligations are set out, of course, in the commonwealth Corporations Act. Section 180 of that act sets out that a company office holder must exercise their powers and discharge their duties with care and diligence. The following sections of the Corporations Act go into these responsibilities in some further detail.

It's clear, of course, it is a long-established fact throughout the Australian community that the duties of a company director cannot and should not be taken lightly. The duty of a director is personal to each director, meaning all directors are accountable, even if they have limited involvement in the company's business operations.

It is why many company directors engage in professional training, to fully understand their obligations. Training is provided by professional organisations: for example, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a very highly regarded organisation that trains budding and current directors in their obligations, both to their corporation and to the broader community.

The training includes learning to identify the duties and responsibilities of a director, and a director's role in evaluating financial statements. It's why, for example, a company director like Ms Anna Finizio, formerly of Grange, in the western suburbs, engaged in such training as a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors—so, by definition, somebody who is directly and deliberately educated in the responsibilities of being a company director. And so it's extraordinary that Ms Finizio would say, after being questioned about what her role was as a company director, that she was, quote, 'just a director on paper'—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —or that she 'had no involvement in it so that's why I wouldn't put something on my CV'—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —'that I wasn't properly involved in'. Despite these statements, it does not absolve Ms Finizio, formerly of Grange, from meeting her duties and responsibilities as a director, particularly as a graduate member—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: —of the Company Directors Course. She put her accreditation as a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors on her CV, but not her role as a company director on her CV. And, of course, it now comes to light that she was the director of a company which subsequently collapsed, owing $4.5 million in unpaid taxes and $1.6 million in unpaid workers' entitlements. She was a director from 2009-10, 2011-12 and 2014-17. The responsibility of corporations and those who lead them could not be more significant to our community, despite how they try to flee those responsibilities.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Treasurer's time has expired.

Ms Savvas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Newland, order!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The exchange between the Treasurer and the member for Schubert will cease.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Colton has the call.

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