Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can see some eyes rolling back in their heads, but the reality is that there was ample opportunity to make some of these necessary reforms. I do not mind that some of these things take some time. I acknowledge the good work of all the committee members of the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. In fact, some of these changes came directly out of that committee’s inquiry, so I thank the members for their work in this area, but note that it is still our responsibility to get the regulations right, which I believe we are doing. It is then the responsibility of the regulator to apply them in the right way, but we need to be conscious that with the realities of the market—1.6 million corporations, basically a self-regulatory system—there will be abuse. Our job is to ensure that we provide the framework to minimise that abuse and to reduce it to, we all hope, zero. Where that cannot be the case we have to make sure the regulator has sufficient powers.

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