Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to reports that today the Prime Minister has backed the banks over members of his own party room who support a royal commission into the banking sector. With the Prime Minister reportedly considering coming up with something less than a royal commission, Prime Minister, have the banks ticked off on your plan yet?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I will invite the Treasurer to respond to this, but I just remind the Leader of the Opposition of this: the Leader of the Opposition claims to be responding to the concerns of Australians who have lost money when they have been given bad advice—

Mr Mitchell interjecting—

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

The member for McEwen has been warned.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

or they have been treated unfairly by banks and financial institutions. What does a royal commission do to help them? Years and years, hundreds of millions of dollars in legal expenses, and at the end of that is written a report—not one dollar of compensation, not one measure of redress. The honourable member's call for a royal commission into the banks is nothing more than a political exercise which will do nothing to resolve the needs, the concerns, of people who have been treated unfairly. I invite the Treasurer to add to my remarks.

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

I thank the Prime Minister. To demonstrate the point of just how crass the populism and opportunistic politics are from those opposite, it was only in March of this year that the Senate Economics References Committee released a report on agribusiness managed investment schemes that ignored a dissenting Greens recommendation for a financial system royal commission. There was a dissenting report by the Greens calling for a royal commission into the financial system. When the Labor Party responded to that—and the member for Rankin will know; when he responded to that—there was no mention in their response of supporting the Greens on a royal commission into the banking and financial industry, and that was only last month. It was in March.

I table the member for Rankin's statement because you cannot find it on his website—he has apparently pulled it down. Why would he pull it down? The truth is that they voted against a royal commission in June of last year, and at every opportunity to say they wanted one they would not open their mouths. The Prime Minister goes down and speaks at a Westpac function and tells them what they need to do about banking culture, and—what do you know?—the Leader of the Opposition pops up a few days later with a royal commission which has the terms of reference of a blank sheet of paper.

This royal commission proposal is about one person and one person only: the Leader of the Opposition. This is all about pursuing his crass populism and undermining an institution that is critical to our economy, and he has no proposals. He would rather spend $51 million going through an exercise for several years, when he could spend that and announce that he wanted to spend that on ASIC. But, no, he wanted the stunt. He is the stunt master.