Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022. As previous speakers have pointed out, this bill has been languishing for 17 months. I wouldn't mind if those 17 months had been spent consulting with industry and talking to consumer groups, customer owned banking, the Australian Banking Association and the fintech industries. But that is not what this government has done. This government has, for the last 17 months, appeared to have done nothing with this bill except let it languish, and that is time wasted. We've come to this position with this bill where the implementation of the first stages of the consumer data right has been poor and ineffective, because the process hasn't worked.

This legislation is the next step of reforms that were spearheaded by the coalition government. We brought it out because we wanted to protect consumers, reduce red tape and improve cyber-resilience in an ever-increasing digital economy. While we will be supporting this bill today, I want to reiterate the serious concerns that the shadow Treasurer, my colleague in the other place, raised: the pace of reform that we are now seeing due to the time lag, the imposts on business and the lack of consultation with business. The government just aren't listening to Australian businesses about the challenges that may stem from this reform. We're highly concerned that they may risk this very substantive and important reform by failing to make sure that it's paced in the right way so that it avoids unreasonable imposts on businesses and does not risk the social licence that this reform needs to be effective, because that is a fundamental part of the consumer data right.

For example, I regularly meet with the banking sector and the customer owned banking sector. Customer owned banks are often not considered when we're talking about the financial services, but they operate the largest regional branch network in the country. They have 21 per cent of all branches, and most are largely in rural and regional areas, and they employ over 11,500 people. They welcomed the consumer data right reset. However, since the first stages were implemented, they have raised concerns about the unequal impact of the regulatory changes on smaller, customer owned banks. Due to the poor implementation of stage 1 by this government, what has eventuated is a significant expense to smaller, customer owned banks, with minimal customer uptake. They are not getting the return on investment. To date, customer owned banks have spent around $100 million and countless management hours upgrading their systems, making sure that they can operate. However, they have not seen any return on that investment, because the way that it has been implemented to date has not been effective, consistent and equitable.

I echo the concerns raised by my colleague Senator Smith in his contribution, and I caution that rushing the implementation without bringing industry along with you, and with unrealistic timelines that could risk further implementation failures, must be avoided at all costs. As the shadow Treasurer said in the other place:

It's particularly important that the impact that the CDR may have on small businesses is right at the front of the government's and the bureaucracy's thinking on how this is rolled out. Small businesses don't have the resources of big employers. Done wrongly, this could wipe out small businesses and reduce competition …

And that is the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve with the consumer data right bill.

Expanding the consumer data right needs to be done correctly and it needs to achieve a reduction in red tape and to support deregulation, which was the intent of the bill when the coalition commenced this process. But we will be supporting this bill today.