George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

and which will no doubt cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lawyers' fees is the way to change the culture. Rather, what the Turnbull government announced last year is that it would bring the banks, through their CEOs, on a regular basis right before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics and put them on the mat in that public forum regularly. That, in our view, is a much more effective way in which to change the culture to which you have pointed.

Senator Gallagher, you might like to kick this issue into the long grass and rely on a royal commission to come back to us in perhaps five years time or so, having wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in enriching lawyers and enriching expert witnesses, but we want a practical answer that will have an immediate and measurable effect and will be able to deal with particular cases. That is why we have opted for the course that we have taken—