Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Whish-Wilson for that question. With all due respect to the senator, he is mixing up a whole series of different concepts that are actually in different buckets. Let me just make a first point. Regulators like regulating, and if you leave regulators to their own devices they will always find a way to make things more stable and more safe. In the end, it will be so safe that none of us will move. Of course, in an economy that we want to grow, it is a matter of getting the balance right. You have got to make sure that you get the balance right between sensible regulation and making sure that economic activity can continue to happen in an efficient way. Of course, the banks, our financial institutions and so on play very important roles as facilitators in the economy, and it is fair to say, in the context of the global financial crisis, that the banking sector and the financial services sector in Australia actually performed very well.

When it comes to the future of financial advice changes, Labor, when in government, used the cover of the global financial crisis and the Storm Financial collapse to pursue a whole range of vested interest agendas that were very close to the heart of the union-dominated industry funds to essentially impose excessive, costly, unnecessary red tape, which makes—