Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

On six occasions over 12 years those opposite were advised to introduce a financial claims scheme by our regulators and they refused. Why did they do that? Because the big banks would not let them do it. It fell to our government to put a financial claims scheme in place to protect the Australian banking system and the deposits of 16 million people. We did that. We have put in place a raft of competition reforms, and most importantly we have put in place the investment in residential mortgage-backed securities that has been absolutely essential for those smaller lenders who have been so badly affected by the global financial crisis. And we have taken action on unfair mortgage exit fees. This is the background, and now we get to the here and now.

Those opposite pretend to be interested in the banks because they see a political opportunity. They took to the last election not one policy on banking—not one. That is how interested they were then. And they were not talking about price signalling. The shadow Treasurer went to the Press Club in May and talked about reform of the Trade Practices Act, and he did not mention price signalling. The first we heard about price signalling was that they had read about it in the paper because the government had been talking to the ACCC about it. So they came up with a thought bubble, pretending they had a plan for competition in the banking system. Of course that had its conclusion in the House today when they presented a bill on price signalling, but it is a bill which will create great uncertainty. They have not been working with the regulators to get it right.

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