Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this MPI moved by those opposite. What an odd matter it is that they've decided to raise in the House today—maybe the Labor strategists are getting ready for the party tonight or maybe there were too many beverages last night and they're just not thinking straight. Those opposite argue that we've not done enough to support the victims of banking scandals. In reality, we know—and those opposite know as well, by the way—that we've already done more to protect the victims of bad bank behaviour than they ever did in government. We've heard that long list of failures here today from our speakers. We know that is what Labor is good at—the mental gymnastics, the conveniently short memories and the logical hoops that those on the other side seem to jump through often and systematically to get to their conclusions. They are simply outstanding.

The government has already introduced strong policies to curb that bad bank behaviour and the improper lending practices and scandals that have been exposed in recent years. We have already, in our time in government, created a banking levy to address many of the broader issues around banking in this country. By hitting the banks where they will hurt—their profit margins—we can reimpose on our big banks the community expectations they are required to uphold whilst they operate in Australia. The big banks, the banks that present systemic risk to our financial system, occupy an incredibly unique part of our social fabric in this country. Without them, we would not be able to function properly as a country. But that does not mean that they get to act without recourse and without oversight. The fact is that our nation's banks are the most profitable in the world. The anti-business bunch on the other side would, of course, see that as a draw back. But if they are successful, they can be profitable. That's a good thing. If our banks are strong and successful, we get surety of investment for all Australians and we get stability and we get growth.

We have the world's best financial oversight in this country. We have the world's best regulation in this country but we all know this can be better. Retaining and restoring trust in that system is paramount for all Australians. That is why we have now embarked on a royal commission. But before we do that it's worthwhile reflecting on what we've already done to protect banking customers in this country. We have already brought a suite of legislation into this parliament to further protect our banking customers. We've introduced a one-stop shop for complaints against the banks and established the Banking Executive Accountability Regime. We've streamlined the process for victims to take legal recourse against those banks that have wronged them. Those opposite say we have completely forgotten about the victims. What rubbish that is!

The Banking Executive Accountability Regime is a scheme aimed at prosecuting the executives of banks who wilfully engage in predatory lending practices. We're improving the safety net of regulation, which, as I have said, is already the best in the world, so that we can guarantee we are protecting those victims.

If Labor cared so much about these banking customers—I don't understand. We've heard today already there's a whole raft of things they could have done whilst they were in government themselves. Indeed, they could have had a royal commission, but they failed to do that. I ask myself: why didn't they do that? Why are they now complaining so loudly? The simple answer is that Labor's positions on these types of issues are, as usual, incredibly flexible, very dynamic, spineless and a little bit wobbly as well. It's always very hard to keep up.

Just going off topic now and speaking of failures, which is ultimately what we're debating—our failure—we know that Labor likes to talk about failure but we note that they've had a few car crashes themselves of late. We don't have to look far to identify them. We know they've had to sack Senator Sam Dastyari from the frontbench again—a repeat of that behaviour. I too join in the chorus that says he should be made by the opposition to resign from the party and from the Senate. Reflecting on citizenship, we have also had the feeble attempt by those opposite to attack coalition MPs on dual citizenship. On that point, I think it's worth reflecting for a minute that the argument carried by those opposite is that because those members on our side received their renunciation of their citizenship from a foreign embassy and not from the consulate here in Australia, they should be referred to the High Court. With this MPI they're clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Clearly they are on the ropes. (Time expired)

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