Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That's the one—who taunts me from the other side, but when I'm making a serious point. I'm a great believer in the free market. I think it delivers better for people. In the end, when incentives are aligned to deliver an outcome for people, the capital will flow because, ultimately, the greatest incentive that any business can meet is consumer demand through goods and services. But, when you have malinvestment or misalignment of incentives, you will get a distortion against people. And that's the great task of the people in this chamber, this building—to make sure that there is an alignment incentive for business and enterprise to grow and prosper, because they're delivering the best outcomes for people. That's why the recommendations out of this royal commission will be critical. It actually gives us a pathway of what we seek to redress. But, as part of the task of doing that, as the royal commissioner outlined, in getting the incentives right, in having financial products that meet consumer need—the task that's necessary to make sure that we have a banking system that does grease the wheels of our economy; that does build confidence; that does mean that people, for the first time, are able to go off and buy their own home; that does mean that people are able to go off and get the investment finance they need to grow their pie, to create greater opportunity for others, to get the capital that people need to be able to grow their business so that they can take it from an idea to something that may then go on to flourish and blossom, to take the capital they need to go on and employ more people and create greater opportunities for the rest of their fellow citizens—you need a system that has as its anchor and at its heart confidence. You need confidence from people in this chamber, confidence because we think they're doing the right thing, but also confidence of the Australian people. The only way you're going to deliver that is that it be well but lightly regulated, appropriately regulated, targeted in regulation. But also, as the royal commissioner has outlined, rather than going through a discussion around adding in new burdens, it's actually removing complexity so that banks and financial institutions know what they have to do, but, equally, that there is no excuse.

One of the great outcomes of the hearings from last week—and I see the deputy chair of the economics committee here now, and I hope he would agree with me—is that, if we are to go down the pathway of simplifying regulation in the financial services sector, there must then also be a complementary discussion about the punitive measures. I know the Treasurer has taken steps in this area recently as well. If you want to build the confidence of the Australian people in the system, that's how you do it: by recognising that, firstly, there are trade-offs, but also that these companies have to understand that the weight and the eyes of the nation are upon them, and that we trust them to do a critical and important role. Great power—and great concentration of market power, as exists in the banking sector—comes with a great responsibility. And I don't think that's unreasonable. I don't want to see people doing the wrong thing, and I would hope that the culture within these organisations is not geared towards doing the wrong thing either.

We have a bill before us that focuses on what we can do to make sure that financial service instruments and products are more consumer oriented. It enables the regulator to take appropriate action to make sure that there is transparency in the marketplace so that financial products deliver what consumers reasonably expect. It's not a particularly radical proposition, but it's clearly a timely one. The question for us now is where we go from here. I know there's a lot of partisan politics around—different views of things like the banking royal commission. Let's just accept it. Occasionally you'll get howls and crows from the members on the other side saying, 'Why weren't you this? or, 'Why weren't you that?' And one day, I'm sure that will be comfortably returned—

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