Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make a few comments on the argument between a tribunal and a royal commission. Today we have heard several speakers from the Labor Party talk up the royal commission. In the few minutes left, I would like to illustrate how flawed that thinking is and how it is actually against the interests of those who think they have been hard done by by the banks. As the Chairman of the ACCC, Mr Sims, has said, one of the great problems with the banking system we have is that there is a lack of access to justice. Someone who feels as though the banks have done the wrong thing by them—whether the banks have engaged in unconscionable conduct, whether they have breached a contractual provision or whether they have engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct—simply does not have the ability, especially as a small business person, to take their case, once it is above the threshold, to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The only option they have at the moment is to take their case through the Supreme Court. The cost for a small business person or an individual consumer to take their case to the Supreme Court tilts the playing field too much against them and in favour of the banks.

That is where a tribunal can actually overcome those provisions. A tribunal can do everything that a royal commission does and more. A tribunal will be able to award compensation. Someone who feels that the banks have engaged in unconscionable conduct that has caused them a loss will be able to have their case heard before a tribunal at a low cost and have that case determined. If the banks have in fact engaged in unconscionable conduct, in breach of the statutory provisions that we have, that tribunal can award compensation. That is something that a royal commission cannot do.

The only people who will win from a royal commission are the lawyers. It will simply become a gravy train for the lawyers that will go on and on for years. What will happen once it is finished? It may then recommend that there should be a tribunal. But the problem for all those people who have had things done wrong by them is that, by the time they get through all those years and pay all those millions of dollars to the lawyers, the statute of limitations for unconscionable conduct or misleading and deceptive conduct, which is only six years, will have expired. Those people will have been timed out.

We ask that the Labor Party, rather than following their flawed way of thinking—this tunnel vision of just going down the one track—come on board with us on the tribunal. Let's get together and work out how that tribunal should work. Give it every single power of a royal commission: the ability to subpoena documents and the ability to make awards of compensation. Let us allow those.

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