Senate debates

Thursday, 25 February 2021

Bills

Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020; Second Reading

11:22 am

Photo of Deborah O'NeillDeborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to rise today to speak on the overdue Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020. I want to point out to Australians who are listening, who would recall the Hayne royal commission, that this is a really important discussion that's happening here today. It affects people's lives in a real and material way. People remember the royal commission. It's starting to become a bit of a 'back then' memory: 'How long ago was that? Was it two years? Was it three years?' That's the kind of conversation that will be happening in workplaces. It's taken an awfully long time for any action. Despite the outrage that people felt when they found out what was going on in the banking sector, it's taken this government way too long to do things to protect the Australian people.

I've said in speeches this week that I am sick and tired of government senators coming in here and saying: 'We understand. We understand the challenges. We care about your financial future. We will look after you. We are the really good managers of money.' I'm sick and tired of them saying how much they care but seeing how little they're actually doing to bring that care into action to provide protections and improvements for the Australian people. That's what is becoming more and more apparent with this government, day in, day out. This legislation is two years late. It shows how reticent the government is to deal with misconduct in the financial sector.

This is, in fact, a government that voted against the banking royal commission—let's remember that—26 times. And this is a government that is now attacking the industry super sector. People will have seen on the television the ads for Industry SuperFunds with the two little hands going up and down. The government thought they were going to have a really good go at attacking Industry SuperFunds, but, when the Hayne royal commission got into it, they found out that the government was actually wrong and that Industry SuperFunds is doing a really good job of looking after workers' money. They didn't like what they found then, and they'll do everything they can to try and damage the sector that got the clean bill of health from the Hayne royal commission.

That battle will continue. Today we're talking about a particular matter that concerns financial investment in this country. We see ridiculous attacks coming from those opposite, including from Senator Bragg—who has some of the most outrageous ideas about the superannuation sector—representing the party now in this place. They said from the very beginning that superannuation couldn't possibly work, that it would never happen, that it would never be good, that every small business in Australia would go under. People need to remember the attitude this government had to superannuation from the very beginning. The reality is that, at this point of time, the government is forgetting the massive misconduct in other areas of the financial industry that needs to be addressed. It wasn't the industry super funds that were charging dead customers. It wasn't the industry super funds that were found to have breached anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing laws 23 million times. And it wasn't the chief of staff of an industry super fund that was found to have embezzled $23 million from members. It was banks and the retail sector that did all of that.

The government was dragged, kicking and screaming, into reform of the banking and financial sector, and now its wildcat backbenchers are trying to drag its attention to the wrong industry again. I think we should be very concerned by the comments that I just picked up from Senator Brockman in his very short contribution to this debate. He is trying to tell Australians that they shouldn't pay much attention to a royal commission report. So let's be clear. This Liberal-National government voted 26 times against having a royal commission. Then they were forced to have it because there was a revolt amongst the Nats—and again I reference Senator John 'Wacka' Williams for a lot of courage on that issue. They've tried to bury it for two years. Finally, they're now having to do a couple of things. And we've got Senator Brockman saying to the Australian people: 'Don't pay much attention to royal commissions. They don't tell you everything that's important.'

But that's not what they were saying when the royal commission delivered its report. On the days after the royal commission delivered its report, the government was saying, 'We agree with the recommendations.' Now, two years later, they're hoping that Australians have forgotten what happened in that royal commission. They're trying to convince Australians, in the contributions we've heard this morning here in this place, that they know better about what to do with your money. They know better—the ones who didn't want the Hayne royal commission. They want Australians to forget it. They want to forget the recommendations. They want Australians not to notice how slow this government is in acting.

But right now we've got a government that is doing something, dragged kicking and screaming into reform, and we have a bill addressing some of the recommendations. To be clear, the bill only addresses four of the remaining 44 financial sector royal commission recommendations—not too much. Since the report was released in February 2019, five recommendations have been abandoned altogether by the government. And now they're looking to weaken the responsible lending laws, which would leave thousands and thousands of Australians open to predation from people who would exploit them.

Despite the royal commission report explicitly saying responsible lending should not be changed, that is the path the government is heading down. Treasurer Frydenberg is ignoring the expert advice, the careful investigation, done by no less than a royal commissioner with all the resources at his disposal. Mr Frydenberg is saying: 'Trust me, my mates across Australia. I'm good friends with Scotty. I'm good friends with you. I'll look after you. Trust me. Just ignore the expert advice and don't pay attention to the fact that I'm going to give dodgy lenders carte blanche to rip off ordinary Australians and leave people wallowing in debt.'

I heard evidence in the committee hearing in Townsville on the government's new IR bill that the increasing casualisation of work is making it harder and harder for many workers to get ordinary lines of credit. Because their work is insecure, banks are saying, 'We won't help you.' It's into that climate that this government is introducing further risk. Australia has one of the highest rates of household debt in the world, and the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, would rather add to that mountain than help give Australians a wage rise. The government, in this legislation and so many pieces of legislation in this place, reveal to us who are watching closely that they really don't care about workers. After seven years in government, they've still got no plan to raise wages, despite industry and the Reserve Bank begging them to do so; seven years in government and their only idea to get Australia out of recession is to cut wages; and seven years of delay and distraction on financial sector reform.

I read in the AFR that the Treasurer will further erode confidence in investors by winding back the continuous disclosure regime. This regime is allegedly to protect directors from some imagined bogeyman of class actions against directors, but, in fact, it's further obfuscating the actions of companies from their shareholders. There are people in the financial market who are paying attention to this, who are seeing exactly what is going on with this government. The thing is, though—as I've said on many occasions in this place—that, when I was growing up in Curran Road, Blacktown, in a fibro house that my mum and dad were very proud to be able to call home, there wasn't a lot of talk about superannuation. That word didn't come across our dinner table. When I think about hardworking Australians who are out there doing whatever they can, stitching together insecure work to try and feed their families, they are so busy just keeping their heads above water that they require this government to act in their best interests. There's a degree of trust that has been given to this government that is being abused, because this government should be looking after those people who are out there doing the right thing—working and working hard, but, at every turn, every opportunity they get, the government build in risk for ordinary hardworking people and constantly drive legislation through this place that advantages those who have the most.

I just can't see how what the government are doing provides any assistance at all to ordinary mum-and-dad investors. How does helping the increasing number of retail investors in the stock market assist normal mums and dads? ASIC itself has said that 'the continuous disclosure regime is a fundamental tenet of Australia's market'. For people who don't understand what a continuous disclosure regime is—and a lot of the words in this place seem to be a long way from what normal people talk about—it's about telling people the truth about what you're doing with your big business that's listed on the stock exchange. That's it, pretty much, in a nutshell. This is what's going on. and you can see what's going on. And we know that, if you know what's going on, then you can make sound investment decisions. It's pretty simple, really, even though it's dressed up in those words. We should be strengthening this pillar of continuous disclosure; we shouldn't be bringing it down—yet that is what the government is attempting to do.

Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures, but this decision cements temporary measures used in a global recession. The government just have it wedged in there and now they are advancing it for the long term, to the detriment of Australians, to the detriment of people investing in the stock exchange and to the detriment of great super funds seeking to invest for their members in the stock market. They are weakening the measures of this regulatory regime. They think people—

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