Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Financial Claims Scheme played a vital role in stabilising investor and consumer confidence during the GFC, and Basel recommendations internationally now are that banks must prepare for the future and that fiscal arrangements must be in place for developing economies for a future potential crash. That means that we need to look at options where there is at least some form of fiscal return from banks in return for the protection offered by the Financial Claims Scheme. Let's be honest: it is the large banks that present the greatest risks, so in many cases we need to re-look at the hated deposit tax that was proposed by the Labor Party. Certainly, there is very little love on this side of the chamber for it, but we know we must be able to prepare for the future.

One possibility put together by the consumer-run banks is to have a threshold of, say, $40 billion in these deposit-taking institutions before they pay anything, and if anything is paid it is on the total liabilities—all of the funds that these funds access for their banking purposes and not just the deposits. This has to be de-linked from deposits and not be a tax on savings. If we do that the base for this tax increases from $1.9 billion to $3.8 billion. It also means you can have a far lower tax—something like one basis point. This would mean that the really small building societies that do not present a major risk of systemic collapse would be exempt, but those around the size of the Bank of Queensland and ME Bank and others might start to pay a very small amount. I encourage this government to look at this option, which would meet our requirements under Basel, protect the small banks, which we respect so much, and would certainly be affordable by the larger banks.