Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Corporations (Review Fees) Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2025. At first glance, the bill is technical and administrative. It validates certain fees collected by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, ASIC, between 1 July 2011 and 11 March 2025. These include late fees, upfront review fees and fees for special purpose companies.

The bill doesn't introduce new changes and it doesn't increase what Australians pay. It simply corrects a technical error in the indexation methodology introduced back in 2011. Over the years, practice on indexation diverged from parliament's intent and this bill fixes that. So, in many respects, the amendment is an integrity measure. It ensures the law reflects what parliament intended and what ASIC has consistently applied in practice. It's administrative in nature, but it matters because it validates ASIC's authority and it ensures consistency in the way that fees are understood.

While the bill is technical in nature, it points to something much larger—the authority of ASIC and the value of the work it does every day. ASIC isn't just a bureaucratic body; it's a frontline defender of fairness in our financial services system, and its work touches every Australian—whether you're a small-business owner, a shareholder, a superannuation fund member or simply someone with a bank account. Regulatory watchdogs like ASIC ensure that financial power serves the public interest, not just corporate interest, and that protection is not abstract; it's measured in real enforcement actions. We just need to look at specific cases, and none is more instructive than the action that ASIC took against one of our biggest banks, ANZ.

Last year, ASIC determined it would level the largest penalty ever secured against a single entity, penalising ANZ $240 million for a range of actions that ASIC characterised as a betrayal of the trust of Australians. In April 2023, ANZ was assisting the Commonwealth government's Australian Office of Financial Management with a $14 billion bond issuance. Instead of taking steps to limit the market impact on this issuance, ANZ sold a significant volume of 10-year bond futures around the time of pricing. ANZ knew its trading could expose its client, the Commonwealth, to significant risk, but didn't disclose this. ANZ also misled the government about its trading turnover for nearly two years. This was not just a technical breach; the bond deal was raising money to finance government services, health, education, infrastructure and defence. ANZ's conduct risked taxpayer funds and undermined trust in sovereign debt management. These are exceptionally serious issues.

ANZ's current chairman, Paul O'Sullivan, and new CEO Nuno Matos told investors there had been no loss to the Commonwealth after mishandling $14 billion in government bond sales, yet, according to ASIC, they estimated that the government suffered a $26 million loss as a direct result of ANZ's misconduct. So it appears that ANZ misled investors about how they misled the Commonwealth, which is simply extraordinary. How can you have confidence that ANZ will seriously tackle cultural issues in its bank when its senior leadership responds this way to an act that prompted one of the largest penalties ever?

ANZ has claimed that senior leadership were made accountable for this, yet the same senior managers are now contesting the action taken against them. While new CEO Nuno Matos is promising a new approach, I'm yet to be convinced this will be a serious effort. The CEO may be different, but the chairman seems unrepentant. How can the chairman of that bank, in a role that is supposed to shoulder a lion's share of responsibility for overseeing corporate governance, not appear to take any responsibility for the cultural issues that seem stubbornly ingrained at the bank?

It's worth noting that this is not the only misconduct by ANZ that has attracted regulator intervention, particularly from ASIC. Between May 2022 and September 2024, ANZ failed to respond to 488 customers who submitted hardship notices. These were Australians facing unemployment, illness, bereavement and family violence, yet ANZ pursued debt collection against them without responding to their hardship pleas in the required timeframe. Between 2013 and 2024, ANZ promoted bonus interest offers but failed to apply them consistently, making false, misleading or deceptive representation to customers. In 2024-25, further errors affected nearly 57,000 customers, with $480,000 in interest not paid. Between 2019 and 2023, ANZ failed to refund fees charged to thousands of deceased customers. Families dealing with grief were left to fight for refunds.

This is on top of prior misconduct spanning more than a decade: a $900,000 penalty for breaching disclosure laws in a $2.5 billion share placement; a $10 million penalty for contravening the credit act and accepting sensitive customer documents from unlicensed third parties in its Home Loan Introducer Program; a $15 million penalty for misleading customers about available funds in credit card accounts, leading to wrongful fees and interest; a $25 million penalty for failing to deliver fee waivers and interest discounts to 689,000 accounts over 20 years; a $10 million penalty for unconscionable conduct over improper periodic payment fees; a $5 million penalty for irresponsible lending in car finance; and a $10 million penalty for attempting to manipulate the bank bill swap rate on 10 occasions. The pattern is clear—repeated breaches, repeated penalties—yet the $250 million fine is minuscule compared to ANZ profits and far lower than the maximum penalty that ANZ could have incurred. While I respect the decision of ASIC in terms of levelling the penalty that it did to ANZ, I did make the point at the time and I make it again that they could have and they should have penalised ANZ harder, because, if deterrence is to work, penalties have got to bite. ASIC has the power to send that signal, and I would urge it to do so.

When misconduct is this widespread and repeated, it's not just a series of technical errors. It's a failure of governance at a serious level and a failure of oversight right at the top of the bank. The behaviour of ANZ has been so egregious that it attracted the attention of the Federal Court. Federal Court Justice Jonathan Beach summed up the reason why this litany of misconduct prevailed for so long: 'ANZ's lack of accountability at both management and execution levels and inadequate senior ownership of formal framework and governance arrangements'. Yet, despite record penalties, we've seen few meaningful consequences for those ultimately in charge. In fact, I'm informed that, at the recent ANZ shareholder meeting in December, uncomfortable questions were repeatedly shut down and given short shrift. This is not the sign of an organisation prepared to confront and repair its governance failings.

Docking a bonus while trimming an incentive payment is not accountability. It is not commensurate with systemic misconduct that costs Australians millions of dollars and erodes trust in our financial system. If leadership isn't truly held responsible, fines simply become a cost of doing business. We cannot have this mindset solidify in our banking system. I believe experience shows that bad corporate behaviour becomes a factor that reshapes political environments and, when the public believes that big businesses like this can act with impunity, it further undermines faith and trust in institutions and questions the ability of governments to act. That's why I'm so focused on the behaviour of the banks and their treatment of everyday Australians. If the ANZ can treat the Commonwealth with such disregard, imagine what they might do to a mum-and-dad retail investor—and that's before we even discuss the way that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia was prepared to have 2.2 million customers or concession holders, many low-income earners, inappropriately sitting in bank accounts attracting nearly $280 million in fees over five years, an act that on its face contravened the banking code of conduct, which requires banks to be proactive in protecting customers from fee related harm. They weren't the only bank to have been found to do this, but they were one of the few to set up hurdles for customers to claim back the fees that they were charged. I've got to say that, if customers owed money to the Commonwealth Bank, I'm sure the path to recovering that money off customers would have been as smooth as silk.

I'm concerned that we're seeing the same weeds that prompted the last royal commission pop up yet again, and the banks aren't taking this seriously. I do believe that it is imperative that we do focus on these governance issues and that the senior management of our biggest banks are held to account, because it does have an impact on ordinary Australians and, when they feel that they are not getting fairness delivered to them, it does have repercussions. If you don't believe that then you just need to see the growth of the Tea Party in the US following the global financial crisis. People reacted to the way in which major financial institutions seemed to get off scot-free for the decisions that they made that impacted on ordinary people and reacted to where people weren't held to account.

ASIC's work is vital not just in banking but also in superannuation, where Australians' retirement savings, security and dignity in later life are at stake. For most people, superannuation is decades of hard work. It's time away from family, missed holidays, overtime shifts and careful saving. It's the promise that, after a lifetime of hard work, the contributions you made to your savings via super will give you a chance to retire with confidence in your financial future. So when that promise is broken, the consequences are deeply personal.

In 2024 and 2025, two major superannuation schemes, Shield Master Fund and First Guardian, collapsed, leaving more than $1 billion in retirement savings at risk. More than 12,000 Australians were affected. Many lost what they believed were their life savings. One could just imagine the crippling anxiety and fear that people would have had when they believed that their life savings to sustain them in retirement had completely gone. Investigations revealed that high-risk investments were being marketed as safe. Research ratings misled investors. Networks of advisers and lead generators steered Australians into unsuitable products. Oversight failed. Ordinary people paid the price.

I'm grateful for the attendance of the Assistant Treasurer in the chamber, because I know the huge amount of work that he has undertaken with consumers directly impacted by these collapses. I know that hearing stories like those that he was forced to confront made clear the very real toll that these events took on families across the country. We cannot ever lose sight of that human cost. In December, the government announced it would be consulting on a range of actions in response to the collapses, including cracking down on lead generation, risky superannuation switching, high-pressure sales tactics and ensuring our regulatory settings are fit for purpose. I also understand the Assistant Treasurer wrote to regulators ASIC and APRA to identify action that could be taken to prevent anything like this happening again and has requested ASIC to consider whether current financial resource requirements for managed investment scheme operators are appropriate.

These collapses have exposed weaknesses across the broader financial ecosystem, where all have a responsibility to protect investors from risk. The release of the outcomes of APRA's thematic review of superannuation platforms is a welcome step, but right now the priority has got to be preserving what funds can be preserved and getting money back into people's hands. We cannot have faith in the superannuation system undermined, and I think it has been important that the work led by the Assistant Treasurer has come to the fore to be able to give people some sense of comfort.

Finally, I just want to congratulate Sarah Court on her appointment as chair of ASIC and starting her five-year term on 1 July. When Ms Court delivered ASIC's 2026 enforcement priorities, she revealed ASIC had doubled the number of new investigations and nearly doubled the new matters filed in court in the last 12 months. I wish her every success as she continues this important work on behalf of Australian consumers and investors, and I thank the House.

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