Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

For a government which has spent a lot of time saying that there is no problem, they have sure spent a lot of energy trying to find a solution. A government which says, 'There's nothing to see here,' before an election has now found not one, not two, not three but four solutions to a problem they not long ago denied existed. The problem is that none of those solutions will work.

None of the solutions that the government have come up with will work and they know it, because they keep changing the answer. Originally we were told the answer was more resources for ASIC. If we could just give more resources to ASIC they could get on with the job. The problem of course was that they cut the resources before they put more in. So the best they could do is come up with a level of resourcing which they inherited, which is no greater—not a dollar greater—than it was when they came to office. They said that was the solution; that would fix the problems.

Then they realised that actually that was not going to cut the mustard. So then we had the next brainwave: an annual chat by the banks with the member for Banks. The Prime Minister said, 'I assure you: this will change behaviour. This will change the way the banks operate.' If they get called in once a year to sit, not with a Senate committee, not with a joint committee but with a government-dominated House committee to answer questions that would somehow change behaviour.

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