Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in relation to this matter of public importance and the vitally important issue of consumer protection. It's quite clear that the Morrison Liberal government has failed to act on delivering better protections for consumers on a whole range of issues, not least of which the issue we're talking about: the reform of the financial sector.

I am going to come back to that issue, but I want to outline some of the history leading up to this. I want to make the point firstly that when it comes to stepping up and addressing issues that are of concern to Australian families the coalition has either been missing in action or has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing. I'm talking about some of the big issues in Australian history, going to some of the fundamental protections that Australian families enjoy—things like universal health care. Universal health care was opposed by the coalition government at the time, in the 1970s with Medibank and later with Medicare. When it comes to the retirement savings of Australians and the formation of the occupational superannuation system, again, this was something that the coalition opposed vehemently. When we come to reform of the financial sector and the appalling scandals that have bedevilled Australians, not only in the last few years but over the previous 10 years or so, we see once again the government choosing to stick its head in the sand, looking after its big business mates and its banking mates, and eventually having to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing.

We know the precursor to the more recent scandals—some of the scandals that took place under the previous Labor government. We saw things like the collapse of Storm Financial, Trio Capital and Westpoint. All of these things were looked at by the previous Labor government. There was a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services inquiry in 2011-12. The reforms that came out of that included financial advice providers being legally required to act in the best interests of their clients and eliminating kickbacks to financial advisers. But these things were fought by the coalition. They voted against Labor's future of financial advice legislation in the House, they voted against FOFA in the Senate and they tried to undermine the functioning of the FOFA reforms when they came to government. But, thanks to Labor taking up the fight on the finance front, FOFA was able to continue, and we went on to see some further work being done by ASIC down the track. For example, in 2016 they found that customers were paying fees for financial advice that was never provided. There were more than 300,000 customers affected by this scandal.

In the face of all these scandals at the time, not only was the government dissembling and trying to fight against Labor's sensible reforms—I remember at the time the comments from the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann, and Senator Sinodinos opposing some of these changes—but then we saw further scandals erupting. It wasn't until after those scandals that Labor started to call for the royal commission. That was in April 2016. We called for that royal commission in light of all the mounting evidence that was there. We saw the pain that was inflicted on ordinary Australians by banks which had a total culture of greed, being driven by the profit motive and return to shareholders at all costs. That was what was driving the system. In the face of that, Labor decided that there was a need for a royal commission. But once again the coalition was there to block Labor's sensible proposals. Over the 601 days or so that Labor was calling for a royal commission and the coalition was holding out, we had the Prime Minister at the time, Mr Turnbull, adamant that there was not going to be a royal commission. He said that it was just going to be a report and nothing would come out of that. He talked about the royal commission being a waste of money and said that the only thing a royal commission can do is ask questions and that it would be a political exercise that wouldn't do anything to resolve people's needs and concerns. He talked about the fact that the royal commission would be a forum for the legal profession and would go on for years—this is what Mr Turnbull said—and would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and not tell us anything new. How wrong Mr Turnbull was, as it turns out and as many of us were aware.

Mr Turnbull also said that the royal commission would be a waste of time. He said it was a populist campaign. He said that it was just a slogan and nothing of substance. He said it was a political exercise, a cynical exploitation. He talked about it being crass populism. We know that the royal commission has handed down a very substantial report. There is a lot of work to be done, but I think we all are in debt to the work that Commissioner Hayne has done in this area. He has shone a light, over the 12 months of his commission, on some egregious conduct, something which I think many of us wouldn't have expected would have come out. Many of us thought that the situation was bad, but we didn't know just how bad it really was. So this opposition to the royal commission, I think, has been a low point for the coalition.

But the opposition to the royal commission is not the only way in which this government has let down Australian consumers. I can make reference to some of the work the Senate Economics References Committee has done in its inquiries in a range of areas: looking at the issue of non-conforming building products and the very slow rate of response by the government to a whole range of issues that are coming out there, particularly asbestos coming into Australia continuously, and the government's failure to protect Australians in their homes by taking the step of supporting Labor's principled position of proposing a ban on the introduction of flammable cladding into Australia. The issue of foreign bribery is an area where the government has had an extremely slow response. On the issue of general insurance protections, we had a report in this area, Australia's general insurance industry: sapping consumers of the will to compare, finding that there were issues with competition in the general insurance market. Of course, I've already talked about the future of financial advice and the scrutiny of financial advice as well, which has been an area where the government has been completely missing in action.

When it comes to the protection of consumers in a financial sense, I also want to make reference to the superannuation area, where we've also seen the government missing in action when it comes to superannuation guarantee nonpayments, which affect the most vulnerable in society. The rates of nonpayment of superannuation are in the billions of dollars. This has occurred under this government's watch, and collection and enforcement action by the ATO has been very, very disappointing. The best response that this government came up with was an amnesty, and, of course, as part of that, companies got a tax benefit from the underpayment of superannuation. It's come up at the Productivity Commission review, and the royal commission has dealt with this as well. This government shies away from debate on these issues, dragging its feet on reform over and over again. So many times super bills have been listed on the Notice Paper, and yet we never get to debate them.

There are a number of other areas where this government has been missing in action on consumer protection—for example, payday lending. I give a shout-out to Mr Dick, who has dealt with this particular issue, and, on dodgy rural lending practices and local bank closures, a shout-out to Zac Beers, our candidate in the seat of Flynn. It is having effects on local businesses in Dickson, and our candidate in Dickson, Ali France, is dealing with this issue very clearly. It's time for a Labor government to step in and address this particular issue.