Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (13:06): ASIC collects fees from users registering their business entities, such as companies, as part of its regulatory activities. The review fees act provides ASIC with the power to collect fees in relation to review dates for certain entities. Typically, an annual fee falls due on an entity's anniversary of registration on ASIC's register. The review fees regulations prescribe the review fees. Regulation 4 sets out how the fees are applied and calculated, including an indexation mechanism, and schedule 1 sets out dollar amounts that apply to particular entities and circumstances. ASIC identified a technical error during a routine review of its regulations—so full credit to ASIC—which affects how indexation was applied to certain fees. The affected fees are late fees, tenure upfront fees and special purpose company review fees collected under the review fees regulations. The 2011 amending regulations made amendments to the review fees regulations to increase the base rate for certain review fees and continue the annual indexation of those fees using the increased base rate. In addition, these amendments reinserted the same base fee for some review fees, and other review fees were not amended. The indexation provisions applied for all review fees, which did not reflect the intended policy outcome at the time—poor drafting of legislation—nor does it reflect the intent now. As a result, ASIC applied an indexation methodology which resulted in incorrect amounts of certain review fees being charged. These amendments validate review fees ASIC has already collected and deem the amount of the review fee to be a certain amount. This ensures any review fees charged from 1 July 2011 are valid and that ASIC was authorised to collect the review fees—authorised retrospectively. I feel very uneasy about that and dislike retrospective legislation unless it is truly necessary. This bill, the Corporations (Review Fees) Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2025, is trying to validate a government drafting blunder to make taxpayers liable, even when the government is at fault. We would not support the payment of late fees as a punitive measure during difficult economic times when the original source of authority is faulty. I think of the small businesses that are impacted. I think of the government agencies that extort fees from many small businesses and other employers. My current view is that we should not support this bill.