Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

Data61, yes. We've got officials who had been working on the establishment of open banking standards in the UK who have been deployed here in Australia for our open banking arrangements. The concern is that you've basically got an uneven playing field insofar as you've got firms that have become accustomed to a framework on the other side of the country coming in here, where we haven't even had time for our own people to see the framework put in place or have time to adjust to it. Again, all these announcements have been made and yet the government doesn't follow through to make sure that what it's doing will be delivered upon in a timely way, in the period in which they were announced.

This legislation, on its face, is quite good, lifting the permissible ownership stake in smaller financial services firms, particularly start-ups. While capital is flowing better to a lot of these start-ups now, and the issue of capital drought is not as evident now as it was a couple of years ago, there are still instances where it may be hard to get a number of investors to back firms in this area that would be capital-intensive and need a lot of support. If you can find an investor who is prepared to back you, and you can provide some leeway through the legislative ideas that are being advanced through this particular proposition that we are debating now, that is a good thing. There's no doubt about it. As the member for Hotham, the shadow minister, indicated, we are happy to support it. My question is: when are we actually going to see this eventuate? We have said we are not going to oppose the bill, but, when it goes to the other place, will it even get on the legislative program to be passed?

As I said, if you look at equity crowdfunding, if you look at the fin-tech regulatory sandbox, if you look at CCR and if you look at this, all of these are reforms that are put forward and they all get logjammed. As I have previously said, I think the Treasurer is the faux friend of fin-tech. Despite all his claims that he supports the sector, he doesn't deliver for them. And he had the temerity to say to the fin-tech community a few weeks ago on open banking reform: 'I have put forward all these great ideas. Don't stuff them up'—as if they are accountable for his stuff-ups, as if they are accountable for the quality of his ideas or his homework. That is a ridiculous proposition. There is no way the fin-tech community in this country should be held accountable, wholly and solely, for the Treasurer's work—poor work or otherwise. The Treasurer should be accountable for the quality of the work that is being done and doing it in a timely way. He likes to create publicity for himself. He has put together a fin-tech advisory group. He brought a lot of people with serious clout onto that advisory committee. Look at the range of people who are members of that committee. He consults with them and they must be scratching their heads. They come to these meetings with the Treasurer and put their ideas forward expecting to see legislative reform that makes it easier for fin-techs to deliver new products and services to inject serious competition into financial services in this country—and it goes nowhere because ScoMo is on the go-slow. He won't put these pieces of legislation through. We get this piece of legislation we are debating now, and you've seriously got to wonder whether it will see the light of day this calendar year. If they are going to be serious about this, they need to make sure that, once it has gone through the House, it actually gets onto the Senate legislative agenda and gets passed and gets implemented as quickly as possible.

The other big fear is that, in the meantime, you don't know what is going to happen on that side of the House. There are all sorts of questions about whether we are going to have fundamental changes in the face of the government. So you would have to wonder whether the legislation logjam will get worse. So they should get on with it, stop using the fin-tech community for publicity purposes, do the right thing by them and make sure the regulatory framework in this country is fit for purpose, modernised, up to date and allows the emergence of a sector that can provide real competition, alternative products, better services and, ultimately, as I made reference to in my submission earlier, a rebuilding of trust that is so badly needed in this sector given some of the things that have been reflected upon in the contribution by the member for Hotham.

See this speech in context