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

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Brandis. In 2014, the Senate economics committee recommended a royal commission into the financial advice scandal at the Commonwealth Bank. Since then, further scandals involving financial advice have been uncovered at the National Australia Bank, ANZ Bank and Macquarie Bank. IOOF are being investigated for insider trading. ANZ Bank have been charged with rigging interest rates, and, again, the Commonwealth Bank appears to have unfairly denied life insurance claims. This is not just a few bad apples, as Senator Cormann once said in this chamber. This is systemic and a cultural issue. What will it take for this government to establish a royal commission into crime and misconduct in the financial services sector?

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

I will take on notice those parts of your question that I am not a position immediately to respond to. But may I make this observation to you, Senator Whish-Wilson? I reject outright your suggestion that there is systemic criminality in the Australian financial system. I think that is a very wild and irresponsible thing to say. In fact, we have a very strong financial system, a strong and well-regulated financial system whose integrity and strength is undergirded by institutions—created by both sides of politics, I might say—most particularly by APRA, a product of the Howard government.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pause the clock. A point of order, Senator Whish-Wilson?

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

Mr President, I rise on a point of order. Senator Brandis is misleading the chamber. I never said that there was systemic criminality in the Australian financial system. He has misquoted me.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. There are ways of addressing that after question time. The minister is in order. The minister has the call.

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

I thought you did say that in fact, Senator Whish-Wilson, but if I misheard you then I acknowledge that. But there is not systemic criminality in the Australian financial system. Australia's financial system is one of the best regulated, best governed and strongest in the world. As a former member of that industry, Senator Whish-Wilson, you would be in a position to know that. That is not to say, however, that there are not instances of misconduct. In relation to the particular instances you have given, some of them, I am aware, are currently the subject of proceedings before the courts and, for obvious reasons, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on those particular instances. But the suggestion that there is the kind of widespread wrongdoing in the Australian financial system that we have seen, by comparison, in the trade union movement, leading to the Heydon royal commission, is simply wrong. The direct answer to your question, as I said at the time of the establishment of the Heydon royal commission, is that you establish a royal commission where the wrongdoing is comprehensive and systemic, and that is not this case.

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

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. On the point of wrongdoing, sometimes there is a fine line between criminality and legality and things that are immoral. Since 2010, the big banks have donated a combined total over $5 million to the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. Is this the reason that you are on the unity ticket with Mr Bill Shorten and the Labor Party in opposing a royal commission into the financial services sector?

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

It is the case that banks and financial restrictions have made donations to both the coalition parties and to the Labor Party. I can assure you that in respect of the Liberal Party and the National Party—

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The biggest donation in history—

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

I am coming to that, Senator Conroy—all of those donations have been properly and appropriately declared, and I dare say the same may be said of the Australian Labor Party. But, Senator Whish-Wilson, it does strike me as passing strange that this question would come from someone who represents the political party that was the beneficiary of the largest single corporate donation in Australian history—I believe $1.6 million in one donation from Wotif. I think people in glass houses ought not to be throwing around stones. (Time expired)

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

Mr President, I ask a further supplementary question. Senator Brandis, you have touched on this, but how does the government compare the scale of misconduct in the union movement with that which has been shown to exist within the financial sector? How can the government justify a royal commission into unions but not into one of the banks, when we know, including from a recent Senate inquiry into managed investment schemes, that tens of thousands of Australians have had their life savings taken by dodgy financial planners and institutions?

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

Senator Whish-Wilson, you ask how I compare them. They are incomparably different. Even in your primary question you were able to cite three or four instances—in each case, by the way, defended or disputed—of misconduct in a sector that is near to universally acknowledged as a well prudentially regulated sector. Compare that, as you invited me to do in your question, with the systemic criminality and corruption of large areas of the trade union movement—unions like the CFMEU, and not merely the CFMEU but also unions like the AWU, which was responsible for the disgrace of the Cleanevent case, directly involving the Leader of the Opposition, where the union took money so as to not prosecute the interests of the workers. There is no comparison at all.