Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great honour that I stand to support the member for Perth for bringing to this House today the debate around the government's failing to protect consumers from the economic power of banks. At long last, this House actually gets to have a debate that might focus on Australian consumers—the people who should be at the very heart of our considerations and deliberations in this House.

Members opposite in this government have fought tooth and nail at each and every opportunity to block any of Labor's suggestion so far about bringing the banking sector and the financial sector in Australia to account for the destruction to tens of thousands of millions of Australians whose lives have been ruined by some of these banks. You are purporting to put a big levy on top, but we, in fact, know that that levy is immediately going to be passed on to Australian consumers. That is the problem. That is a huge problem.

Notwithstanding the muddled mindedness of members opposite when they try and articulate what exactly this levy is worth and what we expect to be delivering from it, the one thing that we do know and the one thing that all the big four banks' CEOs agree on is that the cost of this levy will be worn by either consumers, staff, suppliers or shareholders, but not the banks. So it is going to be the consumer or the poor staff that take a big cut in the neck. This is a time when our four banks last year recorded record profits and the same four banks in the same financial year sacked or shredded more than 2½ thousand full-time jobs. It is the same time when this government is doing absolutely nothing about the record low wages growth in this country. It is the same time when this government is delivering $65 billion worth of tax cuts that these four banks are going to take—thank you very much—$7.5 billion of.

The levy on the big banks is, in fact, a tax-deductible levy. How crazy is this scenario! You have a situation where the government finally says, 'We want to be seen to be doing something about these banks because we are too gutless to call a royal commission on them.' They are too gutless to actually make these guys stand up and be accountable to all of those men and women whose lives have been destroyed by unethical behaviour and by outrageous predatory behaviour by some of these banks.

This is a project that is far too big for the government to want to take on. So the Prime Minister goes to Westpac and gives them a lecture about how they need to behave better. He stands up in this House and says: 'We will hold these banks to account. We're going to ask them not to pass on any of this levy to consumers.' But absolutely everybody—everybody except members opposite—knows full-well that it is not the banks that wear the brunt of this tax at all.

Indeed, one of the other matters that I would like bring to light in this debate is the absolute furphy that this Prime Minister articulated that somehow this tax on banks would help provide a level playing field for smaller banks in Australia. We heard members opposite just now talk about how it is going to allow more new banks onto the playing field. I would just note the report today of the downgrading of the ratings for those smaller banks in Australia. I have two in my electorate: Newcastle Permanent building society and Greater Bank. All are being downgraded. Why? Because of the setback—the cost of borrowing has been pushed up by this strategy now.

So the notion that this is somehow creating a level playing field is complete nonsense. The Australian people will know it is nonsense. The customer owned banking sector is going to know it is nonsense. It is about time this government stopped being the gutless wonders they are and brought on a royal commission, which is what we need.

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