Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I did not have the honour of directly being involved in the G20 proceedings on the weekend, but I did go to an event on Sunday night in Brisbane. It was on the sidelines of the G20, and it was organised on those sidelines. It was a conference put together by the Australian Digital Currency Commerce Association. They put on a conference in Brisbane today with some of the delegates and some countries sticking around for it. I thank them for inviting me to that and asking me to say a few words.

As the Senate would know, the Senate Economics References Committee is currently inquiring into digital currency. For that reason, I do not want to talk about the taxation and regulatory issues associated with digital currencies, but I would like to make a few remarks about the potential of digital currencies to revolutionise our economy. It is clearly apparent that they have that potential; they could significantly change how we store our money, how we pay for goods and services and how we compare the value of different things. But few would go on to consider how digital currencies could actually contribute greatly to economic prosperity and competition in goods and services.

Many years ago, I had to choose a topic for my honours thesis, at the University of Queensland, in economics. I was searching around for a topic desperately early on that year, and I happened to be reading a book by Friedrich Hayek on the denationalisation of money. Senator Brandis might have read this book.