Interview with Sharri Markson, Sky News
4 June 2024
SHARRI MARKSON: Australian businesses are being targeted by international law firms with major class action lawsuits. In one example, a UK law firm Pogust Goodhead has started a $70 billion class action against mining giant BHP after 2015 dam burst causing a giant mudslide in Southern and Southeastern Brazil killing 19 people. The class action comes as BHP spent more than $8 billion in an effort to rebuild affected communities. But it doesn't end with bhp. One of the founders of this firm Thomas Goodhead told the ABC that they would keep pursuing Australian companies for environmental crimes.
[excerpt]
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you plan to launch new claims against Australian corporations?
THOMAS GOODHEAD: Yes, I mean, it's it's something that we've we've been studying a number of cases. I mean, we were contacted I was contacted a couple of years back by communities in Papua New Guinea until these companies stop committing environmental crimes then there's a role for firms such as mine to be seeking to hold them to account.
[end excerpt]
SHARRI MARKSON: And the Australian Financial Review talks about the firm's explicit intent to target local multinational companies. By investing their time in high return class actions, which can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Coalition says the laws around class actions need to be tightened to protect Australian businesses. To discuss I'm joined now by its Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume. Jane Welcome to the program. Look, we've seen that this law firm is currently going head to head with BHP, do you think this is a case that shouldn't be pursued?
JANE HUME: This is a problem that's been going on for a while in Australia Sharri. And it's been going on because of loose regulations, light touch regulations around class actions. But, and I'll say this at the outset, I'm no lawyer. I've never worked in a law firm but I have worked at a fund management, as a fund manager and I know that fund managers will always go to where the money is. So of course these large overseas firms, backed by large overseas fund managers, are now coming to Australia having identified that there is money to be made here through waging warfare against the ASX. They are essentially profiting from other people's misery using our justice system, clogging up our courts delivering very little for those that are parties to the class action, and more importantly, sending that money offshore, overseas to big law firms and big fund managers. And they've been quite explicit about it. They're even boasting about it on social media, and that is unacceptable.
SHARRI MARKSON: So how is this a political issue? You know, what laws do you think need to be titled?
JANE HUME: Well, the number of class action lawsuits in Australia now is out of control. There were 53 new class action lawsuits just last year alone. That's a 200% rise on 10 years ago. Now of those new class action lawsuits a large number were run by just one firm, just one firm and that was Maurice Blackburn. Now Maurice Blackburn is also responsible for six members of the ALP. Stephen Jones, Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney General, Murray Watt, and three others that are not on the front bench so you can see how this one firm that-
SHARRI MARKSON: What do you mean they're responsible? What do you mean they're responsible for those Labor politicians?
JANE HUME: Well, those Labor politicians have worked for Maurice Blackburn before they entered parliament, and indeed, Maurice Blackburn, has now delivered two new Fair Work commissioners just in the last 12 months alone so you can see why this is a favored firm of the Labor Party. The Labor Party has no incentive whatsoever to reform this space. Moreover, Maurice Blackburn has been responsible for around one and a half, I think it may even be two and a half, nearly two and a half million dollars worth of donations to the Labor Party since 2019. So you can say this very cozy relationship between class action lawyers in Australia and the Labor Party. The worst part of this though Sharri, is that these firms whether they be overseas firms, or Australian firms are clogging up our court system. They're grinding our businesses to a halt. They're costing shareholders, they're costing taxpayers, and essentially they're profiting out of our justice system, that's despicable.
SHARRI MARKSON: Now Jane, just before you go, you made some comments relating to Josh Frydenberg in the seat of Kooyong. I spoke about this issue at the start of the program and said that, you know, I'm all for, I support gender quotas, but the idea that an untested 31 year old can't be asked to stand aside for the former treasurer of Australia should he decide to contest his seat again? That's absurd.
JANE HUME: Well Sharri, I think you've missed the point here, which is that that's a decision for the Liberal Party in Victoria. We desperately wanted Josh to come back. We begged him to come back and he chose not to contest that pre-selection. Amelia Hamer, who is a highly qualified young-
SHARRI MARKSON: But he's open to change his mind. The pre-selections could reopen if there is a redistribution, the idea that he has been shut down and told that he can't even consider this because there's a female standing, isn't this pure identity politics?
JANE HUME: I don't think that that's what he's been told. I think that he has, if he has been told and I haven't spoken to Josh-
SHARRI MARKSON: I'm not saying be told privately, I'm saying that is the message that's emerged publicly by you and some others.
JANE HUME: I don't think that that was the message that I delivered Sharri. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. The message that I delivered was that you can't reopen a pre-selection based on boundaries that are draft. Now when those boundaries become confirmed, well, then that's something for the party to consider-
SHARRI MARKSON: So you'd be open to reopening the pre selections. You be open-
JANE HUME: That's not a decision for me.
SHARRI MARKSON: to having an untested nine year old stand aside and having the former Treasurer re-enter Parliament again?
JANE HUME: Sharri, it's a decision for the Liberal Party. It's not a decision for Jane Hume. What I would say though, is that Amelia Hamer contested that pre-selection against three other people, one of whom was KC, one of whom was a surgeon, the other half of whom was a fund manager. It was a hard fought pre-selection, and she won it fair and square. The idea that you would then step aside is a big deal. She has been campaigning for very successfully for a number of months now she's doing a great job. So I think that there is another side of the coin. We would love Josh to come back. We've been saying that for months, but he chose not to, he chose not to. Now, if there is changes to the boundaries that would be significant enough to reopen those pre-selections. That's a decision for the Victorian party, but not until the boundaries are confirmed In the past final boundaries have changed quite significantly to draft boundaries-
SHARRI MARKSON: Alright so still an open question?
JANE HUME: In the seat of Higgins-
SHARRI MARKSON: So you're saying it's still an open question depending on the final redistribution boundaries, you might still reopen the election process. If there are major changes?
JANE HUME: And that may well be a chance. But I don't know when those draft boundaries will be confirmed. It could be as late as October, and we could be facing an election as soon as November it could be as soon as August and quiet. And frankly, if the economic outlook is as bad as it seems to be as we've just uncovered in Estimates. It may well be sooner rather than later.
SHARRI MARKSON: We're out of time, Jane Hume thank you very much for joining us. The Prime Minister has made clear though, that he does intend to serve the full term, which is until next year.