Chris Pearce (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, given that six major global financial institutions have collapsed, merged or been nationalised in the last six weeks alone, what contingency plans has the government put in place to ensure all markets in Australia remain liquid?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Council of Financial Regulators, which met with the Treasurer last Friday, continues to monitor on a regular basis the liquidity requirements and the credit requirements of the Australian economy. If the honourable member had listened to the answer I gave at the beginning of question time, he would know that I went through the various interventions undertaken by the Reserve Bank in injecting liquidity into the economy, most particularly into the overnight money markets over the course of March, June and, most recently, September. This is part of the normal operations of the financial regulators. Furthermore, when it comes to all future contingency arrangements, the regulators continue to examine all that may be necessary into the future. I would suggest that a responsible course of action on the part of those opposite would be to underpin the confidence of this House in the regulators, rather than, drip-by-drip, to seek to undermine public confidence in those regulators.