Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—The government is to be commended for bringing forward this bill. It will increase penalties for anticompetitive conduct and it will expand the scope of unfair contract terms. The Greens will be supporting this legislation accordingly.

In particular, the Greens welcome the increase in civil penalties for various contraventions of competition and consumer law. Under the bill, maximum civil penalties for individuals—and I want to highlight those words, 'civil penalties for individuals'—including the CEOs and other executives of corporate Australia, will increase from $500 million to $2.5 million. As the government has explained, this will put penalties for anticompetitive conduct in Australia on par with those in comparable jurisdictions around the world. After nine years of the Liberal government dragging the chain, this bill will finally bring Australia up to scratch.

But I wish we could say this in other areas. Unfortunately, the good work that the government is doing here stands in stark contrast to their obsequiousness to the banks in other areas. The Financial Accountability Regime Bill, which is currently before the Senate, establishes a framework to hold the executives of banks, of insurers, and of super funds to account. Very similar to provisions in section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act, the Financial Accountability Regime seeks to hold executives to account, not just for deliberately ripping off their customers but for failing to take reasonable steps to ensure that customers are actually not ripped off.

The Financial Accountability Regime—it might help senators to understand it to put it this way—is the banking equivalent of the effects test. But while this bill increases civil penalties for executives under the effects test to a maximum of $2.5 million, the Financial Accountability Regime, as proposed by this government, includes no such civil penalties for the executives of banks. So this government's position is to apply a maximum civil penalty of $2.5 million on executives who breach competition obligations but to give those executives a complete free pass if they breach their accountability obligations, which will set up Australia's banking accountability regime right at the bottom of the international rankings. It is an approach which makes absolutely no sense at all. It has zero internal coherence.

I've got to say it's a worrying sign because the government seems to be picking up where the previous government left off in going soft on the banks. The banking royal commission appears to be lost in the mists of time. This is how the rot sets in: from the chair of ASIC going soft on enforcement to the minister making clear the limits of this government's ambitions, including by not putting civil penalties in the Financial Accountability Regime. As Commissioner Hayne outlined quite rightly in his report, every time the government goes soft and the regulators go soft, the big banks interpret it as a sign they can just get back to business as usual and do what they want to do—which is, let's face it, to exploit their customers just as hard as they can so they can increase their profits just as much as they can. The banks need to be held to account. When the government finally wakes up to this obvious fact, the Greens will be ready to work with them to deliver an accountability regime that is consistent and fair and does the job to hold banking executives, finally, to account.