Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian economy right now is in desperate need of productivity reform and competition improvements. Amidst the cost-of-living crisis and broader economic uncertainty and stagnation, we need policies that make doing business easier, reduce friction in our transaction economy and help bring our regulatory framework in line with, or indeed ahead of, our international peers. That is why I'm pleased that the coalition will support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022.

On the face of it, the bill is a very dry and technical read, but what I would like to do is demonstrate to the chamber and to others that are watching in this debate the real benefits that are to be achieved and realised through this legislation. So I'm going to read from a correspondent who has written to me specifically about the importance of this bill and the importance of passing the bill this afternoon.

She says: 'This bill is of significant importance for enhancing consumer rights and promoting fair competition, particularly within the banking sector, with established banks as well as fintech companies having new opportunities to innovate and compete for our small-business customers based on data driven insights and services. In short, the consumer data right represents a groundbreaking economic reform that prioritises consumers in the data sharing framework. As you're likely aware, Australian consumers generate substantial data through daily transactions with various businesses including banks. The CDR provides a mechanism for consumers to access and control this data safely and securely, empowering them to make more informed choices. From a competition standpoint, this bill has the potential to be transformative. It will enable consumers greater flexibility to switch between service providers, especially in the banking sector. The bill will allow consumers to instruct accredited action initiators to perform tasks such as switching bank accounts or updating information across multiple platforms simultaneously. This action could significantly enhance competition, making it easier for consumers to choose services that better suit their needs. For small businesses, the CDR will drive productivity and growth. It will allow small businesses to leverage their data more effectively for various purposes, including securing loans and managing the most important thing for small businesses, which is cash flow. Importantly, the bill also places a strong emphasis on data security and privacy, which is crucial in the current environment, where data breaches are of significant concern. Given the potential benefits for consumers, small businesses and the overall economy, I respectfully ask,' says the correspondent, 'that this bill be given proper attention and consideration and pass the Senate without delay.'

The coalition is pleased to be supporting this bill today. But it would be remiss of me not to draw the Senate's attention to an important issue, and that is delay and obfuscation. This bill spent just three months in the House of Representatives—just three months; November, December, January, February. Over the Christmas period, it passed efficiently, prudently, through the House of Representatives. So industry stakeholders are right to ask: why is it that it has taken 17 months for this bill to come to a vote in the Senate today? Seventeen months!

Some—I, Senator Davey and other coalition senators—would argue that nothing demonstrates more the tardiness with which the government is approaching productivity and competition issues than this bill. For 17 months it has languished here, and those who have been paying close attention will know that just last month the government pulled it from its legislative program. So the competition benefits that this business owner has written to me about may very well have been not achieved, not realised, for months—possibly even for years. That is the government's commitment to productivity gains and competition improvements in the Australian economy: zilch.

I remind the Senate that, with the support of the Australian Greens, a notice of motion in the last sitting week of this place took the bill from oblivion—remember that the government had taken it off the agenda, off the legislative program, and, with the support of Greens and of other senators, it was put back on, which is why we are here today. The coalition won't be accused of delay and obfuscation.

I will only make one last comment. In discussions with stakeholders over the last few weeks, the coalition has been alert and paying attention to some of the concerns and hesitations that have been raised with it. That's actually not a surprise. In the Senate Economics Legislation Committee report, coalition senators said:

Coalition Senators believe that extensions to the scheme need to be carefully considered to ensure the implementation of the scheme is done properly. This will ensure this policy is successful.

We continue to agree with those remarks in the report of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee. So all stakeholders across the CDR landscape can have great confidence that the coalition will approach this diligently, with an open mind and in good faith. They are characteristics that the government cannot claim to have characterised their actions and engagement on this particular issue.

I commend the bill to the Senate and hope that it can pass, without unnecessary delay, shortly.

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

As has been pointed out by Senator Smith, this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022, has been before the Senate, without debate, for well over a year now. There are reasons for that that I will come to shortly. But I do want to say, at the start of this debate, that Labor has abjectly failed to listen to the concerns of consumer groups and to include greater safeguards to protect consumers' privacy. They have abjectly failed to listen to the concerns of consumer groups and to include safeguards to prevent scams and financial abuse in the consumer data right framework that is before us today. I also want to make the point that Labor has abjectly failed to adequately listen to the concerns of small banks and mutuals, who are disproportionately impacted by their obligations under the proposed consumer data right framework.

Instead of fixing problems with the framework, Labor just took the easy option and left this bill to languish. There's a reason, of course, that they did this. I note that this bill is under the carriage of Assistant Treasurer Mr Jones—and members would be aware that I have had a complicated relationship with him over the first couple of years of this parliament. Mr Jones took the easy option here and left this bill to languish for one simple reason: the big banks in Australia—and, I might add, the big insurance companies in Australia—opposed this legislation.

Now, I'm going to pause here and remind folks what happened when Minister Jones and I agreed that, in relation to passing a particular piece of legislation within a particular timeframe, Labor would include million-dollar fines for dodgy bankers—that is, the capacity for fines of up to a million dollars for banking CEOs who fail to meet their integrity obligations that were conferred in that legislation.

After we reached that agreement, within 24 hours Labor had backed out of it because of former Labor premier Anna Bligh, who is, of course, now the head of the Australian Banking Association. It's that revolving door that we see so much from the establishment parties out of this parliament, where senior members of both parties roll out of this place and state and territory parliaments into cushy sinecures with fossil fuel companies, gaming associations, banking associations—big corporate Australia. Of course, Ms Bligh rolled out of the Queensland parliament more or less straight into the job of heading up the Australian Banking Association, which then called the Prime Minister's office and, within 24 to 48 hours, the agreement I had with Mr Jones was reneged on by Labor because we can't possibly have million-dollar fines for dodgy bankers who break the law! In fact, even though the law is still there and creates an offence, there is no penalty at all able to be applied to the dodgy bankers who allowed those breaches to occur.

The reason this bill was delayed by Mr Jones, which was lazy of him and an abrogation of his ministerial responsibility, was, in fact, that the big banks were in his ear. They told him not to proceed, so he didn't. I've got to say, taking the side of the big banks instead of the interests of ordinary Australian consumers of banking products is very on brand for the Labor Party. It follows an established pattern of the Labor Party doing as it is bid by big banks, big fossil fuel corporations, big gaming corporations and big entertainment corporations in this country, because this is a government that is captured by vested corporate interests. One of the ways it's captured is that revolving door that I spoke about before, and the other way, of course, is through the institutionalised bribery through political donations in this country.

We will be supporting this bill today because it creates a framework to support consumers to access a range of outcomes, including to switch more easily between utility, insurance, telco and banking providers. There are some problems with it that I outlined in general terms earlier, but this bill does constitute a small but important step to make it easier for Australians to get a better deal for essential services and to improve competition in a range of sectors. But we do urge Labor to prioritise fixing the issues in the Consumer Data Right framework, with particular regard to consumer safety and security and to ensure that small banks and mutuals are not unduly impacted.

I can't speak about banks today without referencing the obscene profits that banks are making and the obscene salaries of the CEOs of the big four banks in this country. Let's be really clear about the level of profit that the big four banks make in this country. We have the Commonwealth Bank, which has just recently released its annual profit; that's just shy of $10 billion. That's pretty good if you've got a truckload of Commonwealth Bank shares in your superannuation fund, which you no doubt earn massive tax concessions on because of the absolute rort that is the superannuation tax framework in this country. Make no mistake, the other three of the big four banks will also book an annual profit in that ballpark this year.

But I want to refer members to the salaries of the CEOs of the big four banks. Mr Matt Comyn, the CEO of CommBank, trousered $7.3 million dollars in the last financial year. Mr Shayne Elliott, the CEO of ANZ, trousered $6.1 million. Mr Ross McEwan, the CEO of NAB, trousered the same amount—$6.1 million. And Westpac's Mr Peter King trousered $5.7 million. You'll note I use the word 'trousered'. I do so deliberately because they're all blokes, of course, like the overwhelming majority of corporate CEOs in this country who are making out like bandits by price gouging ordinary Australian consumers. Most of them are blokes—not all of them, but most of them are.

This is an obscene level of profit that the big four banks are making, and their CEOs are absolutely making out like bandits—$5 million, $6 million, $7 million a year for gouging your consumers. It's no wonder people are lining up to get a hold of senior management jobs in the big banks. It's because they can make out like bandits. These banks are too big to fail in this country. They're basically underwritten by the long-suffering taxpayer. It's one of the lowest risk businesses you could ever conceive of in Australia, running one of the big four banks, because they're too big to fail. The government won't let them fail, so they're a zero-risk profit machine. And they're a zero-risk profit machine, profit factory, because they're able to gouge their consumers.

We saw during the supermarkets inquiry, which the Greens established and led through this chamber, how price gouging is occurring in the supermarket sector. I remember Mr Banducci, the Woolworths CEO, pocketed over $8 million in the last financial year. Coles and Woolworths are booking billon-dollar-plus profits every single year by price gouging Australian shoppers while single mothers are skipping meals to put food on the table for their kids and university students and others are having to dumpster dive to make ends meet.

This country is being run by and for the big corporations, the big corporate establishments in this country and by the big political establishment. The Coles and Woolworths of Australian politics are running this country. They're running it not for the benefit of ordinary Australians who can't put enough food on the table, can't pay their power bills, can't pay their rents and mortgages. It's being run for big corporates and their CEOs, who are making obscene profits and pocketing obscene salaries. There is something grossly wrong in this country where the interests of corporate Australia are prioritised by the political establishment over and above the interests of ordinary Australians. Something is badly, badly wrong.

I say to Australians, if you reckon things are going okay for you at the moment, by all means keep voting for the same old mobs; keep voting for the establishment parties. But, if you want change, you're going to have to vote for it at the next election. And, if you want real change in this country, you're going to have to vote for folks who, like the Australian Greens, are going to come into this place and fight for ordinary Australians and fight against the big corporations. That's what people need to do, and I genuinely believe more and more Australians are coming to understand that there is very little to no difference between the major parties. It is Tweedledum and Tweedledumber over there. If Australians want change, they're going to have to vote for it.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And the Greens' big immigration policies are driving house prices and rents skyward—hurting single mothers, hurting every Australian.

It's about time the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022 came up for a vote. I wonder why it is that bills which take away rights, like the Digital ID Bill, are guillotined, debate denied, committee processes rigged to produce the desired outcome and then rushed through the Senate in the blink of an eye, yet bills that give people rights are held back for years. One Nation supports this bill, which should have been passed at the same time as the Digital ID Bill—a piece of legislation that relied on the protections provided in the consumer data right bill.

This week the Minister for Government Services, Bill Shorten MP, released plans for the government's own digital ID, which he calls the Trust Exchange. I don't want to rain on the minister's parade, yet I'm compelled to state the obvious: the government does not have any trust to trade—although the use of the word 'trade' is significant, because it shows the government doesn't understand what it's doing. When you use a digital ID, the circumstances of its use are recorded. There is a data trail that holds rich information about the person being verified—about you. The private intermediary who's performing the data handling can retain a copy of that data for a specified period. Does anyone really think they will delete that data when the retention period ends? That data is worth billions of dollars on the data market. The Digital ID Bill provided no protection against illegal data retention. The consumer data right bill does provide some protections, and it includes an overarching statement of fairness and honesty that would make prosecution of big data for misbehaviour much easier.

The minister has announced, apparently proudly, that the government will keep on file a record of every digital ID transaction. Imagine being proud of that! Such a record will be triggered multiple times a day: on public transport, at the shops and, as the minister himself said, in the pub. Can you believe it? It will happen when entering public buildings, like this one; when signing contracts; when using an ATM; and, as announced this week, when accessing social media. As I foretold when the Morrison Liberal-National government introduced the Digital ID Bill, and again when the Albanese Labor-Greens government pushed it through the Senate with no debate—no debate at any stage—each of these uses for the digital ID is in active development. I thank the minister for his honesty in admitting that the government will retain each of these transactions in its myGovID master file.

The Trust Exchange QR code, which is to be branded 'TEx', is a massive technological undertaking. I do not trust that this government and our bureaucrats have the technical knowledge to pull this off. I have to wonder how Minister Shorten can pursue justice over the tragic robodebt data-matching horror show so aggressively and then turn around and repeat the same mistake with TEx. Mismatches will be the norm; they'll be normal. Data outages such as we've seen in recent months will occur again and again and cause chaos again and again. Yet the government is intent on creating a centralised database of every citizen, accessible from every business in the country through intermediaries who inevitably will be large foreign companies that make their money selling data.

Here's an example of what could and does go wrong. Do you remember when this Labor government demanded a myGov account was needed to register for a director ID? Remember that, Madam Acting Deputy President? It wasn't so long ago. The process was outsourced to Accenture, which immediately treated the exercise as a data-harvesting opportunity, a windfall, and started demanding that applicants for a director ID also provide details of their bank accounts, superannuation accounts, Centrelink account, Medicare number, tax return, drivers licence number and passport number. Yet the only thing the enabling legislation allowed for was the tax file number—one thing, and Accenture harvested seven. One word from the government and big business did whatever they liked with the data of millions of Australians.

Accenture committed theft on a fraudulent basis. It was fraud. My office notified the government, and it stopped. There was no punishment, no punishment at all. What happened to that data? Was all that private information destroyed? I'll bet it wasn't. In fact, no, it wasn't. This government actually paid the big-data company millions of taxpayer dollars—your money, our money—to harvest data for its own commercial benefit, and it went against the law to do it. So excuse me if I don't trust this new TEx system. It's appropriately named, though. TEx will be a digital Wild West where the bad guys, big data, exploit the public for profit and power.

Earlier, when I said this wasn't a trade, here's why. For it to be a trade, everyday Australians would get something out of it that we, the people, do not currently have. People already have a photo ID. They already have government issued identification sufficient to meet any request. The government does not need to know if a person went to the pub today. Do you know who does? Life, motor vehicle and insurance companies. Do you know who else? Employers. They would love to know how often, where and what time of the day an employee goes to the pub. This is why the value of the data industry worldwide is expected to be worth trillions in the future.

In reality, a bank does not trade in money; it trades in risk. Imagine the money they will make if they can entirely eliminate the risk from their books by knowing everything about their customers—everything all the time! Imagine how the government could use that data. The answer is provided in the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's behaviour. Right now he is rounding up people for wrong think and wrong speak. I spoke about that lesson in communism on Tuesday night.

This is the future, your future, under the Albanese Labor government or under the other uniparty wing, the Liberal-Nationals, who introduced the Digital ID Bill and introduced the misinformation and disinformation bill. Trust has been lost. Mr Albanese and his Labor government have lost the people's trust, lost the people's confidence, lost the people's support. After the Morrison government grossly and dishonestly mismanaged COVID-19, Mr Dutton and his Liberal-National opposition have not yet earned people's trust, confidence and support. We need a strong crossbench of true conservatives to stop Australia's slide into poor governance. The election cannot come fast enough.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill of 2022—and, yes, I did say that right. This bill has been around for quite some time. In fact, it's been before the Senate without debate for over a year.

The Albanese Labor government has, sadly, failed to listen to the concerns of consumer groups to include greater safeguards to protect consumer privacy and to prevent scams and financial abuse in the Consumer Data Right framework. They've, sadly, also failed to listen adequately to the concerns of smaller banks and mutuals, who would be disproportionately impacted by obligations under the Consumer Data Right framework. So, instead of actually addressing and fixing those problems, the bill has been left to languish for a year. You ask yourself why? Unfortunately, the conclusion that I draw is that it is because the government have bowed to pressure from their political donors—the big banks and the insurance industry. They oppose this important reform for consumers. Choosing to support massive corporations like the big banks over the interests of everyday Australians is a tragic pattern that we have now seen and continue to see from this Labor government.

And I reflect on earlier in this government's term when the Assistant Treasurer reneged on his support for a Greens amendment that would have imposed million-dollar fines for dodgy bankers. It was the right thing for him to originally commit to that, but then he reneged on it, and do you know why? Because executives of the big banks complained to Jim Chalmers. They rang up and said, 'Oh, no, please don't hold us accountable for integrity breaches.' And the government said: 'You want us to jump? How high? No problems, mate.' The big bank CEOs can just call the Labor government and get whatever they want.

Yesterday people might have seen Commonwealth Bank, or CommBank, as it's rebranded itself, posted a $9.79 billion profit. That's almost $10 billion in pure profit made by Commonwealth Bank. That is earned off the pain of mortgage holders and renters and struggling families who can't afford the basics to survive. It should be criminal how much money the big four banks have made off the housing crisis. Right now, on average, $400 of every monthly mortgage payment that people pay is going straight to the profit of the big banks; that is $400 a month from every single mortgage payment is going straight to the profit of the big banks. People are forgoing things like fresh fruit and vegetables just so they can make their mortgage repayments. Meanwhile, the big banks are posting collectively profits of $30 billion in a year. It's absolutely obscene. Labor and the Liberals are happy to let the banks rip off Australians, because they take millions in political donations from them.

This is exactly why the Greens have long campaigned for political donations to be reformed, for them to be banned from the big banks, coal and gas companies, weapons manufacturers, the alcohol and gambling lobby and property developers. Big corporations should not be able to buy policy outcomes from anybody forming government. That is why we're seeking to clean up the political donations system. It is an obscene and broken system that we live under. Corporations should not be able to make billions in profit when 3.7 million households don't know where their next meal is coming from. That shouldn't be a controversial statement; it should simply be the bare minimum of a functional society. I might add that the wealth of the richest 200 people in Australia is now equivalent to 25 per cent of national GDP. No-one should be able to hoard a quarter of the country's wealth when 761,000 kids live in poverty. It is utterly wrong.

People need to know that it doesn't have to be that way. We can change this. But the divide between the billionaires and ordinary people will only get bigger if the Labor Party and the Liberal Party continue to put their corporate mates first. We say tax the big corporates and make them pay their fair share, but, once again, the Labor government have chosen to back in the big banks ahead of everyday Australians and leave their own bill that would help consumers and support better competition languishing for over a year in the Senate. So I'm glad that the bill is on today, and we will be supporting it because it creates a framework for consumers to access a range of outcomes, including to switch more easily between utility, insurance, telco and banking providers. That's a small step, but it's an important one to make it easier for Australians to try to shop around and get a better deal for things like essential services and to improve competition.

We urge the Labor government to prioritise fixing the issues in the consumer data rights framework with particular regard to consumer safety and security and to ensure small banks and mutuals are not unduly impacted. But, fundamentally, when you've got a system of one of the banks posting a $10 billion profit and all of them collectively posting a $30 billion profit with 761,000 children living in poverty and with people genuinely struggling to pay their mortgage or their rent and cutting down on food for themselves and their families to try to make those mortgage payments, it is utterly obscene that the big banks are laughing all the way to the door with $30 billion of collective profits.

There is a widening gap between the obscenely wealthy and the rest of Australians. It is not good for economic outcomes. It is not good for social cohesion. It is not good for the interests of everyday families that the government is meant to be standing up for. That's meant to be all of our collective jobs—to make sure that people have what they need to live a decent and meaningful life. Instead, we have almost $10 billion in profits from just one of the big corporations that actually run this place. We have our democracy held hostage by big corporates, because they make political donations and then they get the policies that boost their profits. What a nice cosy little relationship between the majority of this parliament and the big corporates! What about ordinary Australians? Why aren't their interests being prioritised ahead of the interests of the big banks and the big corporates? It is obscene. People are fed up with it, and people know that if you want change you've got to vote for it.

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to 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.

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

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022 process may have been initiated under the coalition, but I want to remind the chamber that, in 2017, it was the Greens that proposed measures for bank account portability. I remember asking former senator Cormann several times back in 2017 how we could achieve it, and I had a quick look at the Hansard before to remind myself of that.

There were issues around the sharing of consumer data, but the coalition did say they were open-minded at the time to measures that could increase portability of accounts. Of course, the fundamental problem was that banks knew that their customers were, as a general rule, what were classified in the industry as 'sticky'. They didn't tend to move, and there were a lot of barriers to customers moving. For example, if they weren't happy with the service from their bank, their mortgage rates or their fees and charges, they would look at better options, including in the non-bank financial intermediary sector, not just the other banks or big banks. Competition was very important, but the banks knew that it was very, very hard for customers to move.

That's why this bill has been sitting on the Notice Paperas has been pointed out by a number of speakers—for nearly 17 months. And that's why it's taken seven years to get legislation that can actually allow bank account portability and make it easier for Australian consumers of financial services to move. Of course, the banks see customer information as their intellectual property. They have the arrogance to assume that they own this information about Australian citizens and customers—but of course they don't. Essentially what this data right framework will allow is the transfer of information between financial institutions. I would like to put on record, as I know my colleagues have done today, that we need greater safeguards to protect consumer privacy in the consumer data right framework, to prevent scams and financial abuse, and that concerns have been raised around the sharing of information.

I think it's fair to say that this chamber played a very important role in the last decade in getting a royal commission into misconduct in banks and financial services in this country, which made a number of recommendations that were supported by the government at the time. It led to over 70 pieces of legislation being introduced in this place to try and protect Australian customers and consumers and battlers—people doing it tough. I think the royal commission was shocking in its revelations. Even the critics of that royal commission—some of them in this place—agreed, when the evidence became clear and was provided to the commissioner, that they were shocked by some of the revelations and that we needed change.

That came about because the Greens stood up to big corporations. We stood up for battlers, for Australians that were being ripped off and for victims of financial crime, and it became patently obvious that we needed change and reform. When I think about state capture—blimey! How many years did we have of asking questions, where the previous government refused to acknowledge that there was corruption in the banks and that we had a corrupted political system where politicians and political parties were benefiting from financial donations from banks? We're seeing the same thing in the fossil fuel industry right now. The big problem we face right now is state capture, writ large. If we're going to take action on climate change, we need to change the political system that facilitates the revolving door between fossil fuel companies and parliamentarians and the donations that we see being made to the major parties by big polluters.

I was very disappointed to see that, after some of the debate we have had on the Browse project in Western Australia and the plans for Scott Reef, the leaked report from the Western Australian EPA just two weeks ago has led to legislation being introduced in the Western Australian parliament to remove the independence of the NPA. If that is not state capture, what is? (Time expired)

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2022 has expired. In accordance with the order agreed to on 3 July, I will put the question before the chair and then will put the questions on the remaining stages of the bill. The question is that the bill be read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.