Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. After all the stories of banking scandals, thousands of victims, life savings gone, homes lost and businesses gone under, the Australian people want a royal commission into the banks. But the government has been using its one-seat majority to protect the banks from a banking royal commission. How can the Prime Minister continue to accept the vote of the Deputy Prime Minister when it means that the victims of banking scandals are denied the royal commission they deserve?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition have proposed a banking royal commission for some time. They have expressed this on the basis that they feel it is a way of getting at the banks. The object of our policies and everyone's policies should be to ensure that banks look after their customers and, where their customers have been mistreated, justice is done. That is the difference. Every policy we have introduced since the election relating to banks delivers greater protections and justice for their customers.

You can see that our institutions are working. If you look at the money-laundering allegations relating to the Commonwealth Bank, they were uncovered by AUSTRAC. Proceedings have commenced. They'll be before the court, I believe, on 4 September. That is very shortly. We have institutions that are working. The Treasurer and the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services are putting in place a new one-stop shop for people who have been mistreated or dealt with unfairly by the banks so they can get justice. Royal commissions have their uses and value, but at the end of the day they cannot recompense one person. They cannot provide any compensation. All they can do is inquire and, at the end of a long period, inevitably, write a report with recommendations. And I'd ask honourable members to reflect on this: what would the recommendations of such an inquiry be? You would find that those obvious recommendations are already being implemented by a government that acts, by a government that protects depositors, that protects borrowers, right now.

That's our commitment. We are delivering on our commitment to protect the customers of the Australian banks. We are holding them to higher levels of accountability than they have ever been held to before. We're getting on with that job—with more resources to ASIC and to AUSTRAC, ensuring that our regulators do their job. Customers, Australians, want justice now. That's our focus, not a political outcome.