Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

They go off and speak to the person at the bank. They show documents and they try and establish their equity. They then go off and buy a home. And then they go and build their family and their future, with security.

I think that is actually a pretty noble service, frankly. That somebody believes strongly in building a country from the bottom up, from the citizen up, the idea that individuals can form families, build community and the foundations for country is actually something of which we should be appreciative—all of us; it is a good thing. But that does not mean that sometimes even those service providers get things wrong. They do. People who get elected to parliament even get things wrong sometimes, believe it or not, such as this ridiculous motion.

The question is: how do you deal with it? When problems come up, do you address them? Do you try to get the banks to solve them themselves? If you do not, you design properly designed regulations and frameworks in law to make sure that they are held to account. Or, do you create a pointless and needless and expensive witch-hunt? Actually, those opposite have chosen the latter. And do you know what the government is doing? The government is creating a sensible and practical level of regulation for the banks so that people who have problems can have them addressed. If you have an issue today with a bank—it does not matter who you are; you could be on our side of politics or your side of politics, of the 24 million people in this great country—you can go to an agency that will help. We are setting up a one-stop shop, an Australian financial complaints authority, which creates an external dispute resolution model and greater transparency for internal dispute resolution by financial firms.

Opposition members interjecting—

I see the members opposite now starting to shift away and move around, because it might be making them feel a bit uncomfortable, when the government actually comes along and produces a practical, sensible, outcomes-driven improvement in the banking sector to address the problems Australians are experiencing, unlike the absurdity of what they are proposing in their motion. And in the end, banks will be held accountable, through both regulation and the marketplace.

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