Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I made it very clear in the House last Wednesday in the second reading speech that we would be putting in place arrangements that reflected the fact that there needed to be a threshold above which a fee would be paid. Let me say that this finetuning that I forecast here is what the Treasury officials and the Reserve Bank have been talking about, and it is precisely the question on which the Leader of the Opposition has been repudiated by the Treasury secretary. Why are we doing that? We are doing that because there have been representations made to the government, to the Treasury secretary and to the Reserve Bank of Australia about the impact of this measure. Because the government believes in a comprehensive guarantee for everyone, we are going to put in place a charge above a threshold. That charge or that fee above a threshold will be for deposits above $1 million. Those details are being worked out. They will be published. The pricing will be out there for everybody to see in an open and transparent way.

What this is really about is their embarrassment that they have crab-walked away from support for a comprehensive guarantee for all Australians with money in banks. I tell you what: they should be severely embarrassed about that because what has occurred since we put in place this guarantee is that markets have stabilised and interest rates have come down. The banks that have taken those decisions have cited the government’s decision. So, in effect, in opposing this comprehensive guarantee they are opposing lower interest rates. That is what they are doing. All of this is about hiding their embarrassment at us putting in place a comprehensive guarantee that has stabilised the Australian financial system.

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