Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

As I indicated in my answer to the Leader of the Opposition in his first question today, the process in which the Reserve Bank and the other regulators, including the Treasury, have been engaged since Sunday a week ago has been, firstly, to resolve the implementation detail of the premium to be attached to the term wholesale funding arrangements for the banks; and, secondly, to resolve the implementation arrangements concerning the deposit guarantee. The interrelationship of those two matters was explicitly canvassed at the time that the Treasurer introduced the financial claims legislation into the House last Wednesday. Since then, as you would normally expect there has been a lot of exchange between the Reserve Bank and the other regulators, including the Secretary to the Treasury, on the detail of that. That is the normal way in which public policy is conducted. Once these matters have been resolved in finality they will be made public, as I have said repeatedly at this dispatch box and as the Treasurer has said repeatedly at this dispatch box.

I say this to the Leader of the Opposition: this entire process in the midst of a global financial crisis would be made much easier had we had bipartisan political support for the key financial institutions of Australia. In the space of one week, we have had the Leader of the Opposition launch a political attack on the Secretary to the Treasury, we have had an orchestrated continuation of that attack by his senators in Senate estimates yesterday and on top of that we have had an orchestrated attack on the Governor of the Reserve Bank at the doors this morning and on the independence of the Reserve Bank. Up until now we have had no single statement of repudiation at the dispatch box, let alone an apology, by the alternative Prime Minister of Australia. This is also a pattern of behaviour—

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