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

International finance does not understand the nuances of the Australian parliamentary system, so sideline it. What an extraordinary admission that is by a very able minister, I might say, because that is the truth of the matter. I am very sad that why we are here today is to hand away the parliament’s authority to deal with national crises. A default by one of the banks would be a national crisis and the parliament ought to be recalled.

The minister says in his second reading speech that the banking institutions did not think parliament could be recalled fast enough, so they did not want parliament involved, and the government has obliged. Again, I object. This parliament is here to represent the interests of the Australian people. It is bad enough that we do not have a Senate committee inquiry into this matter, because that has been voted down by both the big parties. But it is worse that the outcome is going to be a situation where it will be up to the executive—that is, Mr Rudd, Mr Swan and one or two other members of cabinet—to decide when and how they are going to use public money to make up for a default, a failed loan, by an Australian banking or finance institution which has unwisely borrowed overseas. That is the heart of this matter. This is a public guarantee for private incompetence. This is a public guarantee for a mistake made by the private sector. That is what is ultimately being arranged here. The parliament is left aside. I will come to the Greens amendment on that in a moment.

I want to ask the minister something before I get to the matter of the wisdom of the sunset clause. Yesterday the Senate passed a motion calling on the Prime Minister to specify the measures he is going to take against executive salary excesses by tomorrow week and what action will be taken. Now we are dealing with the banking sector in Australia. We have seen the extraordinary tens of millions of dollars given to some executives in that sector in Australia in the last 12 months, totally outside any reasonable payment for any person. That is some 80 times the take-home pay of the Prime Minister of this country. I defy any banking institution, Macquarie Bank included, to justify that sort of self-organised largesse at the expense of deposit holders and taxpayers generally. I ask the minister: could he outline to this committee what it is that the Prime Minister is going to do.

The Prime Minister has spoken strongly against executive greed in both domestic and international forums—most recently at the G20 meeting in Lima in the last week. So what action will be taken? Here we are, acting on behalf of the finance houses and the big banks, giving a public guarantee to a private risk. I ask the minister: where is the quid pro quo here? Wasn’t this a very good opportunity to say that finance institutions that are going to be advantaged by this guarantee and take it up ought to have their executives be decent about the amount they take out of those finance institutions? The Prime Minister says that he is going to act on it—he has not—but it is fair enough for me to ask at this point: what action is he going to take?