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

I had to say that, Senator Polley.

It fascinates me. We had a business forum in this country organised by the Fin Review and The Australian. I must say I was very disappointed that the Greens were not invited to that business forum because it was discussing a vision for this country in tax reform and we have a lot of very good ideas that we have always been on the front foot with around tax reform in this country. One of the things that came out of that forum—it was widely reported and, a couple of days later, backed up by a statement from Roger Corbett, a well-known corporate figure in this country who went into retirement—was that the Senate is making this country ungovernable from a big business perspective. Then, of course, as he likes to do, Rupert Murdoch made some very similar comments on his Twitter account on Thursday night last week. It was the same thing: the Senate is making this country ungovernable; let's have a double dissolution election.

That bank deposit levy would have been a significant reform and it would have got through this Senate. The Greens would have supported it if it had been good legislation that targeted the big four banks to put aside, on the estimates that we had costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, between $1.1 billion and $1.4 billion over the forward estimates into a reserve account for contingencies around potential liabilities should we see more financial crisis.

Another reform that would have got through this Senate and arguably—certainly from my personal perspective—would have been a lot more important was implementing the findings of the government's own Harper review and amending section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act to bring in an effects test. This is what small businesses around this country want; this is what farmers around this country want. Give the government and the ACCC, which acts on behalf of the government, the powers to have create a level playing field in this country and, for example, at least test the proposition that the supermarkets duopoly has too much market power and often uses that market power to the detriment of small businesses and farmers in this country. This is significant reform and a very important piece of legislation that people, including my party, the Greens, have campaigned on for decades.

Guess what? The government walked away from it. They turned their back on small business, the sector of this economy they so often take for granted. So, while they are whispering sweet nothings in the ear of small business on one hand over a Chinese trade deal, the government walked away from the reform that small businesses and farmers in this country really want: competition powers to take on abuses of market power—another example, Mr Murdoch, of reform that could have got through this Senate, if it had been good legislation. I wrote to the Prime Minister myself—of course, I was hoping for an answer, but I have not got one—asking him to bring us the legislation. Let's do this in this parliament. Let us—the Liberal Party and the Greens; and I know how much this means to the National Party and their constituents in the bush—work on getting a section 46 effects test through parliament. But the government walked away from it. They think they have done 'enough' for small business in this country.

Well, guess what? According to the lead lobby group for small business in this country the tax cuts and the instant asset write-offs are just a shadow of what they want. This was the Holy Grail for them, and there was a significant expectation that the government would deliver on this—especially following all the work and all the feedback that went into the Harper competition review. And I have to say that the final recommendation of the Harper review was a bit weaker than I wanted. Because of the consultation with the big end of town, section 46, the final version of it, was weaker than what I would like to have seen. But it was significantly better than the existing competition laws that we have got in place, where you have to improve content in anticompetitive behaviours rather than look at the effect of anticompetitive behaviour. This is a significant disappointment.

To the big end of town, big business in this country, who are claiming that the Senate is making this country ungovernable because it cannot get economic reform through the Senate, I say that there are two examples. A bank levy would have raised billions of dollars on, arguably, the most profitable financial sector in this country. They make tens of billions of dollars of profits for their shareholders each year, who have been propped up by the Australian taxpayer to the extent that this levy would erase the revenue. The taxpayer and the government stepped in to give a deposits guarantee. The government guarantee—and this was all modelled by the Reserve Bank—has allowed banks to access wholesale funding at a better rate. As Senator Canavan well knows, their price of money was lower because the risk is lower. The premium would have been higher if that guarantee had not been there. And that has been good for the banks. They borrow money in wholesale markets and then they lend it out. They do other things—they invest their money in securities and all sorts of different investments—but, essentially, that is how banks work. So the Australian taxpayer has helped the big banks make money.

Of course it has had some good effects on the financial stability of our system, as it was designed to do. This bank levy was saying, 'Give the money back to the taxpayer.' At least have a contingency fund put aside for future financial crises, which will always happen. I do not want to digress too much, but it is remarkable how often financial crises do happen; just outside the boundaries of our memory, these things continue to happen. So there are some reforms that we could be dealing with and I could be talking about here today. I am proud to say that my party has campaigned for years on a bank deposit levy. We have campaigned for years on helping farmers and small business get a section 46 amendment to the competition policy.

But what I am standing here today talking about is a policy proposal that has been put up by the Australian Bankers Association, the same people who have lobbied against the FoFA laws, which we fought tooth and nail in the Senate—credit to Labor where credit is due—to retain in their existing format to strengthen laws around financial advice. The Australian Bankers Association no doubt fought tooth and nail in the corridors of power, behind the scenes, and they made public statements to oppose a bank levy. They probably even gave the Prime Minister the line 'This is a tax on your bank deposits'—which is a total myth; it was a levy on bank deposits. The Greens proposed a levy of 0.5 per cent on deposits up to $250,000. We were not sure what the final proposal from the government would be, but it would be a levy and it would have been sensible policy that would have been passed by the Senate. But when you criticise this House and say we are making this country ungovernable it is because we do not pass legislation that the big end of town wants. But this would have been legislation that certainly small businesses and some of our governance organisations would like to have seen.

What we have in front of us today, the Banking Laws Amendment (Unclaimed Money) Bill is a flaccid attempt at reform for the banking sector. In my opinion, it is wholly designed to give the banks the upper hand. I want to read a statement by the former Treasurer, Wayne Swan, and the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Bernie Ripoll. In a media release on 29 November 2012 they stated that 'reducing from seven years to three years the time before money was referred to the government was a good thing because Australians who have lost track of superannuation or old bank accounts will now have their money returned faster and interest paid to preserve its real value'. This was a bill that was brought in by Labor—and good on them. It was supported by groups such as CHOICE. Let me read you CHOICE's comment in its submission to the Senate inquiry:

The proposed amendment contains several important amendments for consumers.

this is going back to 2012 when it was reduced from seven years to three years—

With unclaimed money being transferred four years earlier to the Commonwealth, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission or the Commissioner of Taxation, the erosion of balances through fees, commission and adverse market movements is substantially reduced.

Now hands up who does not understand that especially for small amounts of money, which the majority of unclaimed deposits tend to be, bank fees are not a substantial part of your return on those unclaimed moneys. I made the mistake of leaving $500 in a Westpac account and forgetting about it. Six years later, when I realised that I had an actual physical passbook—this is about 10 years ago—I went in to withdraw the money in cash and I found that I had $126 left. I had $126 left—out of a $500 deposit!

That was the erosion. It was only a small amount of money, I will warrant, but at the time it was important to me. The erosion of that amount was through fees. There was interest on top of that, but it was actually fees and charges that ate that amount.

Why do you think the Australian Bankers' Association want to keep these deposits for an extra four years? Well, go figure! It is because they can earn fee income on these deposits. They claim that—and I am not sure where they got the evidence from—if the government increases this to seven years before the government takes responsibility for it it will reduce the claims by half on these unclaimed money deposits. And, by the way, when it goes to the government you get a CPI return, not a return that has been heavily eroded by fees and service charges. It seems to me that this is about giving the Australian Bankers' Association what they want and it is about them making more fees and income.

Whatever your arguments for or against, it is a pretty poor attempt by this government to bring legislation like this before the Senate and have us even stand here and debate it when there are so many more important things we could be talking about, like multinational tax avoidance, reform around negative gearing and superannuation tax concessions, capital gains concessions and a whole range of things that we could do for affordable housing in this country, removing perverse incentives for fossil fuels for the big mining companies or providing research and development tax breaks for high-risk mining exploration companies—giving taxpayer deductions to mining exploration companies that you go punt on down at the local share market. There are so many things that we could actually be dealing with in the Senate that you would classify as real reform.

Take superannuation tax concessions, for example. It has been ruled out, depending on who you believe. Because this government is so chaotic, it is hard to know from day to day who speaks on what. If we had some decent reform proposals on superannuation tax concessions, I have no doubt the Greens would support that. We have very clear policies in this area. It is another example of why it is a load of rubbish that this Senate is making this country ungovernable. It is just that the right policies and the reform that is necessary is not coming from a gutless government that is more interested in the politicisation of things like national security than it is in actual reform in this country. They are totally rudderless.

While we are in this period before we go to an election—whenever that is going to be, and I do not think any of us know whether or not we are going to have an early election—I say here again today to the Prime Minister and to those across the chamber that if you want to get sensible economic reform through this place we have voted with our feet. You cannot dispute our track record on things like pension changes and small business reform. We have supported good legislation that is in line with our policies, values and beliefs. We are prepared to do that on things like superannuation tax concessions, on a bank levy and on section 46 competition policy—