Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Milne, for the question. The government made some decisions around the resourcing of ASIC, I think, in the last budget; but I will check—perhaps not in the course of this question but certainly afterwards—for some further detail on this. We are conscious of the importance of resourcing all our regulators appropriately, given the task that they are asked to undertake. I would also make this point, however: as the Senate would know, we make those decisions in terms of funding of all our financial system regulators in the context of a constrained fiscal environment, and one in which the government has had to deal with a very substantial write-down in revenues over a number of years. Our budget decisions are made in that context.

I would make this point: Australia's financial system did weather recent events well, in terms of the global financial crisis, and came through that crisis in much better shape than almost any other advanced economy. Obviously, that is a tribute to not only our institutions but also our regulators more broadly, as well as the cooperative culture that our regulators seek to have with our financial institutions.

In terms of particular requests of funding for different entities, obviously the government is faced always with a request for further resourcing for many institutions within government and we have to prioritise those. We have done so and we will continue to do so in terms of decisions to be made in the future.