Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

ER () (): It took Labor a day to renege on a deal struck in good faith with the Greens to introduce million-dollar fines for bankers who break the law. But I thought it would be worth referring to how the Australian Financial Review reported Labor's reneging on a deal because, in many ways, the first two paragraphs speak to everything that is wrong with Australian politics. The headline reads 'Banks force Labor to rethink on $1 m executive fines.' The article says:

Banks have forced the Albanese government to put off the vote on a bill to lift accountability in financial services, with Labor now rethinking a last-minute deal with the Greens that would have added million-dollar fines for law-breaking financial service executives.

The banks, led by former Queensland Labor premier Anna Bligh, warned the move to put individual fines back into the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) would have unintended consequences for lenders.

We have an extraordinary situation where a former Labor Premier, now head of the banks, can lead a lobbying effort to overturn a good-faith deal to introduce what I would argue the vast majority of the Australian public would think is pretty straightforward, which is that bankers that break the law should face consequences. We have here an extraordinary example of how power works in this country and who ultimately this government works for, which continues to be the big banks and multinational corporations. You only have to look at the fact that, as people's mortgages go up, people are being evicted from their homes because they can't afford the rent. People—pensioners, low-income residents, even teachers or nurses—are having to make tough choices between paying the bills, feeding the kids or paying housing costs, at the same time as banks like the Commonwealth Bank post record profits of $5.15 billion. We have chronically underfunded schools and hospitals. We have a situation where the government can find $368 billion for nuclear attack submarines but not a single extra cent to lift people out of poverty, or for public or affordable housing, but a banking lobbyist can walk into parliament and get what they want in a day. So why is it that a teacher or a nurse or a low-income resident can't walk into parliament and get the same thing? Why is it that the government will listen to the banking lobby?

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