Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is amazing to listen on this side of the House to those that speak on the other side, just to see how out of touch this government and the party of government is with what is actually happening to Australian people and Australian consumers of banking and financial services. Only hours ago in this House I spoke about the role of government in assisting the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed. When it comes to the victims of banking scandals, this government could not be further away from this ideal. We have had a government that has finally been dragged kicking and screaming to the idea of the royal commission into banking, and, boy, is this one of the biggest backflips we have seen out of this government! As the Shadow Treasurer remarked earlier, that is saying something given the litany of backflips, retractions and changes of direction that we have seen this government have.

To pick one other example: I really love it when we're sitting here on this side and we listen to one of the many Dorothy Dixers aimed at the minister for energy around energy policy. The tail end of that question is always 'and are there any other approaches?' I'm still waiting for them to own up to the fact that they've had about five approaches all of their own just during this term of government.

But let me come back to the victims of banking. I think it is instructive to make sure that we learn from the words of the Prime Minister:

I can tell you we have as a government decided not to have a royal commission, we made the decision a long time ago, not because we don't believe there is nothing going on in terms of problems with the banks, it is because we want to take action right now and we are.

That is a very interesting choice of words from the Prime Minister. I'm going to come back to part of that later, but I think I want to start with the first part of it, because then we get these further words from the Prime Minister:

Government policy remains the same until it is changed.

There is no shorter way to sum up government policy from this government than those few words, because it is nothing but a litany of backflips.

But, when it comes to this particular backflip, what was instructive is the way in which the government acknowledged that the decision to hold a royal commission was, in its view, regrettable. It's not regrettable for the victims of the many scandals that we have seen throughout our banking and financial sector. It is not regrettable for them, except when we dive a bit more into the detail around things such as how the government could only agree to hold a royal commission when the banks let it agree to have a royal commission. This government is essentially a front for the banks, and it's the pun involved in what was mentioned before: that the government set up an inquiry through the House economics committee, and who from its side did it decide to be the chair of that committee? It was none other than the member for Banks! It said it all right there. They didn't see that sitting in front of them. I just don't believe it.

But let's come to some of the detail. When we look at these terms of reference that were agreed to with the banks—apparently, there was some consultation with the Reserve Bank and APRA. APRA is the government's favourite financial regulator at the moment. I do feel very sorry for our friends down at ASIC. ASIC is one of the twin peaks of financial services regulation, which this government says it is doing so well at. The government cut out one of those financial regulators. When looking at what it would do when holding a royal commission, it didn't even ask them about it. Whilst they wouldn't admit it, their faces told the story in our committee hearing last week. They're feeling just a little miffed that this government won't ask them about how to conduct financial regulation in this country when they are the experts at it, it would appear.

This highlights one of the key deficiencies in the terms of reference and the way in which the government is proposing to this conduct this inquiry—and that is that you can't just look at the banks and financial services sector on their own. A critical issue here is their culture, and part of that is determined by the regulatory environment in which these organisations operate. The necessity for a royal commission, and part of the reason why we cannot leave to our regulators the protection of consumers of financial services in this country, is that there is a critical need to make sure that our regulators are properly resourced and properly empowered to hold people to account—in particular, the senior executives of the banking sector. It is imperative that they are empowered to do it. This government has been a complete failure when it comes to that. It takes about a regime to keep the banks accountable, but it doesn't do anything to protect consumers at all. These victims have been left high and dry by this government. (Time expired)

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