Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I advise the House that the coalition will be supporting these amendments. It was quite an ordeal, but we got there eventually, to try and save the government from itself, some might suggest. These amendments, as I mentioned earlier, faithfully reflect the objectives of the coalition's amendments, so the Office of Parliamentary Counsel obviou­sly has a greater flair for drafting than I have. I accept the word that they do faithfully reflect the objectives that we had set out.

We felt it important to have some process defined for markets that may be prescribed under this bill to be subject to these provisions. The government has made it clear that the banking sector is the first cab off the rank. I am not aware of any other markets. I acknowledge that the parliamen­tary secretary is shaking his head. He is slightly at odds there with the chairman of the ACCC, who has been repeatedly quoted as saying he can imagine any number of markets to which these provisions should apply. Mindful of that, we were keen to make sure that markets were not shirt-fronted in the middle of the night by a regulation that no-one knew quite where it had come from or why it was there and that process was just a tad too political, in that it did not provide a proper opportunity and proper process steps. So we think that is a constructive step. I note again the parliamen­tary secretary's advice that banking is all that is on the table at the moment. I also note and encourage the government to continue constructive contributions with the banking sector. I know that, the day before we delivered our dissenting report on this bill from the House Standing Committee on Economics, there had still not been a clear definition of what banking actually was, so we are still not quite sure what will be in, but at least we have a process to be defined that will set out if additional markets are to be captured.

The exceptions are very important. We argued in the dissenting report that there were clear, acceptable and ordinary business transactions and conduct that should not be captured by this bill. The government members on the committee said: 'No, that's wrong; the bill's perfect. Let it pass through.' I am pleased the executive has seen fit to pick up the work-outs for people in a distressed financial situation or facing insolvency. They are a clear example where lenders would need to engage in a discussion about what to do. The syndicated multiparty lending transactions—I am pleased the government has picked that up. On the legitimate and proconsumer conduct of mortgage and finance brokers: it would have been a crying shame if they had been frozen out of doing that worthwhile work.

I accept the advice from Treasury and the government on the 'white labelled' or 'vanilla' products in the banking sector, where one bank might provide certain services on behalf of other banks and the other bank puts its brand on them. I accept that a specific exemption for that is not necessary and that the notification and authorisation process will capture that.

They are all the provisions that we were arguing for. Above all, the ordinary-course-of-business exception is extraordinarily important. Whilst the government has publicly said and has just confirmed now that it is intending only to apply this competition regulatory framework to the banking sector, the machinery is in place for it to be expanded across any markets. The utility of the bill provides for that, yet the exceptions are overwhelmingly banking centric. They would mean basically nothing to other markets and to other areas of goods and services. So, without having some ordinary-course-of-business exception, if other markets were to be captured and prescribed under this bill, where would they go? They would not have any responsive exceptions for their particular industry. We would need to amend the law every time a new market was prescribed under the bill. That is not tidy, that is not reasonable and that brings no comfort to anybody wondering just how these new provisions might be applied.

With those remarks, I indicate that the coalition will be supporting these amend­ments. I again thank Mr Bradbury, the Treasurer's office and officials for their assistance in getting to this point.

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