Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Cormann) to a question without notice asked by Senator Whish-Wilson today relating to the budget.

I asked the minister today a very important question about whether there had been any leaks from Treasury, specifically on the bank levy. I will give a little bit of background. The question I asked the minister was about a report on Sky News on Monday evening that the budget tomorrow would include a bank levy. The next day, when trading opened, bank shares were sold off and nearly four per cent and $14 billion or $15 billion was wiped off their valuation. Today nearly $19 billion still remains wiped off their valuation. I asked Senator Cormann if there had been any leaks from Treasury. Senator Cormann was very careful in his response. He said to me twice:

Treasury … is not aware of any evidence of a leak out of the lockup.

Then he said again:

There is no evidence, according to advice that we have received from Treasury, of any leak out of the lockup.

He did not say that he was not aware of other leaks prior to budget day, such as someone giving some information to Sky News. Instead, he tried to say that that was speculation. So I then asked him: why is it that Tony Boyd in the Financial Review an hour before the lockup was talking about details around the design of the budget levy? He said two things. He said:

In a move reminiscent of Labor's mining tax, Treasurer Scott Morrison is planning to impose a tax on the aggregate liabilities of the major banks, according to banking sources.

He said:

… Treasury Secretary John Fraser will call the big four bank chief executives on Tuesday night at 6.30pm before Mr Morrison delivers the bad news.

The banks did confirm that they were called just prior to the speech, but clearly we had a journalist who had some information about the design of the tax, but it came from banking sources. So my second question was: was there government consultation with the banking industry around this levy? Senator Cormann said no. He was very careful in his answers. He said that there was no leak out of the lockup.

My issue is: if there has been a leak prior to the lockup—and clearly there has been; you can call it speculation if you like, but speculation has got to start somewhere—then how do we know that there have not been other leaks to the banks or to other sources prior to the budget? The reason I am so interested in this is that, perhaps unlike other leaks that we see going into budget time, this was a particularly sensitive piece of information that related directly to the valuations of the major banks trading on the share market, and, potentially, could have been an opportunity for someone to short those banks and profit from that information. Nineteen billion dollars of value has been lost from the sector, but that is potentially a very big profit for someone who may have put in place a trading strategy around a fall in bank prices, had they known that price-sensitive information prior to it.

So all I did today was to ask whether Senator Cormann would investigate, so that we could rule in or rule out whether there had been any anomalous share trading, and trading in options—the most likely place for someone to have capitalised on price-sensitive information. That is all I have asked the Treasurer to do. He has said it is not necessary; he has got no evidence that anything has occurred. My point is: we have had leaks on a very sensitive budget measure—that is clear. How do we know, unless we actually look?

So I have written to ASIC and asked them to look at share trading in the weeks leading up to the budget to see if there was any anomalous share trading. I think it is a very reasonable thing to do. Senator Hinch has written to the Federal Police asking for an investigation of leaks around this issue. I think the first step should be to check with ASIC and actually collect the information that would be necessary before we go that next step. So that is what I have done today. And I think Senator Cormann was very tricky in his response and answers to my questions. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.