Govt wants to complete Johnson agenda

The Federal Government has declared its intention to complete the agenda of the Johnson Report by ensuring Australia becomes a financial services centre, but with the caveat that it will not be looking to suddenly overtake Singapore or Hong Kong.

The Government's commitment to the Johnson Report agenda, vigorously pursued by the Financial Services Council (FSC), was made clear by Assistant Treasurer Senator Arthur Sinodinos who yesterday told a banking conference that it was one of the Government's ambitions to complete the Johnson Report agenda.

"We are looking at issues for example about how we finally get a retail corporate bond market going. We are looking at further streamlining the fund manager regime here so that people can use Australia … as a source of fund management expertise and all the rest of it and not be penalised in tax terms," he said.

"…We are revamping the offshore banking units here to make sure that they are as competitive as they can be while they respect the rules around the integrity of our tax system."

Sinodinos said the Government was also looking "at how we encourage the financial services industry to come up with more retail products. Not just the retail corporate bonds but also, for example, more infrastructure products, which are tailored to the needs of retail investors".

He said the Government had in mind the superannuation pool, including self-managed superannuation funds which were expressing an appetite for new financial instruments, including those in the infrastructure space.

"So for us there is quite an agenda there about how we promote greater diversification of our capital market. It is very important to us to get more of those retail products going," Sinodinos said.