Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was trying to figure out what had happened. I had to go and get my hair cut and so I missed some of the intervening debate. When I left, we were talking about banking laws and, when I came back, Senator Macdonald was making a fine contribution on other matters. But I am glad that we are still on the same topic. I do not share the rhetorical gymnastic skills of Senator Macdonald to tie those issues into this bill, but, since he has already done so, I will use it as an opportunity to back the points that Senator Macdonald was making. Put very simply, we cannot change the temperature of the globe from a room in Canberra—we cannot do that. We might love to be able to do that and we may want to be able to do that, but we cannot. I am very proud to be part of a party with a strong history and record of practical and pragmatic action for people in this country, and we cannot practically change the temperature of the globe from Canberra. It has to be something we do globally, and I would be very opposed to any move that puts at risk one job or one Australian family's ability to provide for themselves—a move based on some ideological, passionate debate that seeks to do something that we cannot do. I am on a unity ticket with Paul Howes on that: if it is to cost one job, we should not do it. On our own we cannot do anything to change the temperature of the globe.

That somehow brings me back to the Banking Laws Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill. I am happy to share Senator Macdonald's support for this particular piece of legislation. We should at all times try to provide consistent laws for the Australian people so that they can plan their futures and understand the laws of the land and comply with them. We should avoid haphazardly changing what has been in place for decades and, in this case, for more than a century—for almost the entirety of our federation. For almost the entirety of this parliament, people could be assured that, if their money was in the bank and they had not touched it, it would not be taken off them for at least seven years. There was a seven-year period in place to ensure that people who were using an account in that period did not have that money taken from them. For reasons I will go into later, in 2012 the then Labor government decided that they needed more cash and so they raided people's bank accounts. It was the wrong thing to do; they made a futile attempt to hit an unachievable budget surplus target and so they raided the bank accounts of Australian people. There is hardly a lower act of that former government, even though they did lots of low acts—