The Federal Government has adopted the mantra of “taking action now” against the big banks as it seeks to defuse the Federal Opposition’s continuing calls for a Royal Commission into banking and financial services.
The Treasurer, Scott Morrison sought to ram home the “taking action now” message in a succession of interviews in which he argued that action such as that being pursued by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) reflected the immediacy of the Government’s strategy as opposed to the time it would take to hold a Royal Commission.
On the question of the future of Commonwealth Bank chief executive, Ian Narev, Morrison said that was a matter for the bank’s board but pointed out that the APRA would soon be announcing the name of the person responsible for undertaking the independent review of the Commonwealth Bank.
“APRA have announced a very wide ranged inquiry into CommBank and soon APRA will be announcing who will be undertaking that review and it’s more specific tasking, and it will be their job to get under the covers on this and have a good, strong and hard look at it and take whatever action is necessary,” he said.
“There’s an inquiry taking action now. The Government is taking action now on the banks. Others want to delay taking action for years through a Royal Commission,” the Treasurer said.
“You need to take action now. That’s what the Government is doing – whether it’s our new executive accountability regime which I’ll be introducing into the Parliament next month, whether it’s our new Financial Complaints Authority that will give customers of banks a more ready opportunity where things go wrong, they can have their cases heard, resolved and get binding settlements out of that process of having their matters heard.”
“We’ve increased the resources of ASIC [Australian Securities and Investments Commission], we’ve increased their powers, APRA is opening up our banking system to more competition. So, the Turnbull Government is taking action now on the banks. APRA is taking action now on the Commonwealth Bank,” Morrison said.
