Senator Nick Xenophon says he will oppose the privatisation of the corporate registry held by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic), saying it would be “unambiguously bad news” for consumers.
He has called on the Turnbull government to suspend the sale and to make the registry free to access.
His declaration comes two days after the Greens announced they would block any legislation that would enable the privatisation, and after the Greens’ treasury spokesman, Peter Whish-Wilson, called on Labor and other Senate crossbenchers to signal their opposition to the plan.
“We oppose the privatisation of Australia’s corporate database,” Xenophon said on Thursday, referring to his team of senators and one lower-house MP. “From all camps there are massive concerns about the risks associated with the sale. This is privatisation gone mad.”
The Turnbull government will now need the support of Labor for the sale to go ahead but Labor has not made a decision.
Labor representatives received a briefing about the privatisation from officials from the Department of Finance on Wednesday.
Xenophon said the government should make the database free to access. He said the amount of revenue the government gets from Asic searches is miniscule compared with the public benefit we would get if it were free.
“But first things first, we need to knock this privatisation on the head for the stupid public policy that it is,” he said.
The leftwing activist group GetUp handed a 71,000-strong petition to the Turnbull government on Thursday, calling on the government to keep the database in public hands.
“Time is running out to stop the sell-off, so it’s great to see momentum building quickly against this harebrained plot,” GetUp’s campaigns director, Natalie O’Brien, said.
“Australians will not stand by and let the government pawn off corporate transparency data to the highest bidder.”
The Asic corporate registry is a database of important information on more than 2m companies in Australia. It allows the public to search company names, histories, names of directors and other important information for millions of companies that aren’t listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
It has been central to efforts to expose the tax avoidance habits of private companies and has helped to investigate cases of money laundering, financing terrorism and labour exploitation.
The Abbott government announced plans in its 2015-16 budget to undertake a competitive tender process for Asic’s registry business, believing it would be better run in private hands.
The government says legislative and regulatory changes will be needed to privatise the corporate registry but it won’t say what they are.
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said the government might not end up selling the registry into private hands but it was considering bids.
On Monday, 84 journalists published an open letter urging the government not to privatise the registry.
