George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister believes everything he says. Senator Ketter, I've tried to explain to you and your colleagues more than once this week, but let me try again. A banking royal commission was not the government's first preference; it was not. But we did arrive at a view last week that, because of some of the very wild language being used in the discussion of a royal commission about the financial system—in particular, coming from your side of politics, Senator Ketter—there was a real risk to the stability of the Australian financial system. For that reason, the government acted, as it ought to have done, to protect the stability and the integrity of the Australian financial system by establishing a royal commission.

It is not, by the way, the royal commission that Mr Shorten wanted, which, as I said a couple of weeks ago, would have gone on for years and achieved nothing, but a focused royal commission with tight terms of reference, an eminent Australian of unimpeachable integrity and expertise to conduct it, and a 12-month reporting date to ensure that it wouldn't go on forever and that it would be able to deal with specific problems and deal with them efficiently. In the meanwhile, while the debate about a banking royal commission was going on, the government announced a series of other measures in relation to the regulation of banks, like executive remuneration, like accountability to parliament, like a complaints procedure to enable those who were aggrieved by the conduct of banks to— (Time expired)