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

I explained yesterday why it is not the government's policy to have a royal commission into the banks. If you'd been listening—as I'm sure you were, Senator Ketter—to the question Senator Georgiou asked me yesterday, he pointed out himself that, since the GFC, there have actually been 17 separate inquiries into the banking system, parliamentary inquiries and other inquiries, and the government has been very, very active in implementing the recommendations of those inquiries; in particular, giving effect to the recommendations of the Ramsay review, looking at legacy cases of banking misconduct. The point I made to the chamber yesterday and I make again today is that, if we had adopted the Labor Party's view that there should be a royal commission, then it would still be going, because these royal commissions go for years. They report at the end, and aggrieved customers would have years to wait before they got any relief, years to wait before they got any compensation or recompense, as they are getting now as a result of the much more immediate steps that the government has taken. The Ramsay review is only one of the many—