Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

It is fair to say that, so far, Australia has withstood the global financial crisis better than any comparable nation, but there is more to do to make sure that we capitalise on the opportunities provided by our comparative strengths and also to ensure that we continue to outperform the rest of the world. A robust financial services sector is important to that agenda. It is important to ensure that we continue to capitalise on the opportunities available so that we have well-paying, highly skilled jobs in the financial services sector and export more of Australia’s financial services, which are so important to our economic performance.

The World Economic Forum last week released its Financial development report 2009, which gave a significant endorsement of the maturity of Australia’s financial markets. I am very pleased to report to the House that that report marked Australia as second in the world—ahead of the United States, ahead of Hong Kong and Singapore and ahead of many of our competitors—for the maturity of our financial services sector. Importantly, in this very tumultuous time, Australia was the only country in the top 10 to have improved its performance over the last 12 months. The stability of our financial sector has been very important in this result. Australia’s financial services sector has been building on its strengths, building on the quality of our prudential regulation and building on its very good track record. It has been further supported by the strength of the real economy. It has been further supported by the fact that Australia is the only nation among the nations with which we normally compare ourselves which has not gone into a technical recession.

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