Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on how the government is further strengthening Australia's financial services sector? How is the coalition government providing greater choice and transparency in financial services?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for his question. The biggest decisions we make in life, whether it is buying a house, saving for our retirement and living off those retirement savings or running a business, all relate to our financial system. It is important that that system is as strong as it possibly can be. This was a key feature of the Howard-Costello government in their response to the Wallis inquiry, which insulated, quarantined and supported the Australian economy during one of its most significant challenges to ensure that we could see through the GFC. The forward-thinking of the Howard-Costello government ensured that our financial system was as strong as it could possibly be.

In addition to that, part of our plan to ensure a strong economy with strong jobs growth is to have an even stronger financial system. This goes along with what we are doing to improve our tax system and what we are doing with our free trade agreements, our innovation statement that will be coming later in the year, the infrastructure investments, the competition policies and the strengthening of the budget—all of these together with our response to the financial systems inquiry today is about growing the economy and growing jobs.

The government's response to the Murray review embraces, in whole or part, some 42 of the 44 recommendations. As part of that, we are seeking to support the recommendations to increase the resilience of our system through capital adequacy and strengthening our regulators in their oversight of our financial system. We are providing Australians with greater choice and control over their money, because we understand on this side of the House that it is their money. The money that goes into superannuation is money that they have earned, albeit they may be mandatorily required to contribute to superannuation, but that does not make their contributions the ownership of their employer or the union of which they may be a member. Their money going into super should not be used as chattels in negotiations made by unions and employers to direct where their money should go, because they should decide where their money should be invested. It should not be subjected to deals, and we know all about the deals done by those opposite from time to time—Clean Event and all of these things. We do not think that people's superannuation should be used as chattels in the sorts of deals that are done by those—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer will confine himself to the subject matter of the question.

Mr Thistlethwaite interjecting—

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are providing in our response that the Productivity Commission will immediately move to conduct an inquiry to ensure that there will be greater choice on default funds.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kingsford Smith has been warned.

Ms Burke interjecting—

The member for Chisholm will cease interjecting.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister has already mentioned the announcements in response to the recommendation on surcharges that we will be banning unfair surcharges. Currently, the average interest change fee is 0.5 per cent. But we know that there are surcharges charged between one and three per cent and even as high as 10 per cent. Our response is to say, no, that is not fair and we will not allow that. (Time expired)