New minister Hume faces continuing Trio/Astarra claims
It started when Bill Shorten was responsible for the financial services portfolio and traversed the five ministers thereafter, with the new assistant minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and Financial Technology, Senator Jane Hume, now being asked to address outstanding issues around the Trio/Astarra collapse.
Just as it has approached every other minister in the portfolio the Victims of Financial Fraud (VoFF) group has written to Hume pointing to what it saw as the shortcomings in the approach adopted by the previous responsible, the now-retired Kelly O’Dwyer.
The VoFF has been consistently critical of the manner in which both the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) handled the Trio/Astarra collapse and is now claiming that criticism has been vindicated by the recent findings of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.
In its open letter to Hume, the VoFF Group said that on the basis of the Royal Commission findings, “Australians now know that the Government was wrong about the banks, wrong about ASIC and APRA and wrong about financial consumer discontent”.
The letter said that some of the Royal Commission’s recommendations were at the heart of the VoFF’s complaints which had been initially dismissed by the Government and said it believed there now existed enough information to show why several hundred Australians affected by the Trio/Astarra collapse continued to pursue monetary compensation.
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