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

I appreciate the opportunity to make a contribution in support of this legislation. I pick up from where the previous speaker, from the neighbouring electorate of Hotham, spoke. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Design and Distribution Obligations and Product Intervention Powers) Bill 2018 is not some grand experiment; it is simply a recognition of a power that ASIC has asked for to try and make sure we strengthen the financial products in the marketplace that consumers should be able to comfortably rely upon, knowing full well that financial products are geared and orientated towards them.

I recently had the privilege of serving as the chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, including grilling some of the bank CEOs in the previous fortnight about some of the worrisome cases that have emerged out of the royal commission into banks and financial services organisations. When you go through the royal commission's report, it highlights a number of themes, including, of course, explicit examples of where financial institutions have done wrong. I don't think there's anybody in this chamber who thinks that, where there is wrong, there shouldn't be recompense and a pathway through remediation and redress. When people have what, in the end, are numbers on pieces of paper but their livelihoods are taken away from them because of misconduct or misjudgement or inappropriate conduct by banks, yes, there are dollars and cents that disappear, but, really, it's lives and the hard work and earnings of people that disappear. In fact, it is their accumulated effort, often over many years—particularly when people put their private homes down as a basis of security to be able to do things like grow their own business or try and secure a greater sense of opportunity for themselves and their family for generations to come.

But there are other themes that came out of this report from the royal commissioner, including challenges and competition. I know during the hearings last week, in particular, the member for Mackellar outlined concerns about what the royal commission raised and about whether there needs to be a greater injection of competition between the big banks as part of securing a more consumer orientated financial services system in this country. There were also big questions about the alignment of incentives. So, when people within financial services organisations go out into the marketplace and provide products for people, are they acting in the best interests of the consumer—meaning offering them a product that they want but, more critically, that they may need and that then goes on to meet their need? Or are people incentivised to provide products in the marketplace and to sell those products on to consumers based on what delivers them—the broker—profits, bonuses and a better financial outcome for themselves at the expense of the consumer?

I'm a great believer in the free market. I always have been. It's not because of some grand ideological obsession, though some people have accused me of that in the past. I see a South Australian member—the member for Wakefield; is that right?

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