Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Xenophon, I would not demean chihuahuas by saying that the ratings agencies were in their category! These ratings agencies failed their job; yet we have a system that inherently depends upon the very same ratings agencies. The banks are saying, ‘Give us this legislation so we can move up a notch on Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s.’

The Prime Minister, in his last address to the Press Club, said:

The balkanisation of risk, the attenuation of risk sought the impossible dream of the elimination of risk and responsibility—so that ultimately nobody believed they carried risk and responsibility.

And through it all, the ratings agencies blessed these products as safe investments—ratings agencies that have yet to face their own day of reckoning—and the products they sanctioned continued to proliferate.

Here we have the Prime Minister, who said that the ratings agencies have yet to face their own day of reckoning, dancing to their tune post the financial crisis, post the failure of the very same ratings agencies. I ask the question—and I will be asking it in committee, so get ready, Minister: who is rating the ratings agencies? What is the government doing about the failure of these three international watchdogs, which are manifestly a disgrace? Whatever reason you give for them, they disgracefully failed, and millions of people around the planet are paying for it.

Now the banks are saying, ‘We depend on the ratings agencies for borrowings overseas and we want legislation that is going to put us up a notch on the ratings offered by these very same failed ratings agencies.’ What a remarkable situation this is that the Australia parliament is being bulldozed by these failed ratings agencies and the international banking system. This puts pressure on other countries in our region to do the same, to fall into line. Poorer countries cannot compete with our banks for the very same reason that we are here today, which is because our banks are saying, ‘We want to compete with the UK banks.’ We have the wealthy countries instituting a process to get advantage—I will not use the word ‘greed’—in the international financial system, which puts the squeeze on poorer countries again. That is part of this process which I object to. (Time expired)