The Labor Party can no longer defer to the Hayne royal commission on whether to separate the banks. Even Paul Keating, who started bank deregulation, has called Hayne’s final report a failure on structural separation.
The 18-page bill to separate the banks that Pauline Hanson will introduce into the Senate next week will do more to fix up the banking system than anything in Kenneth Hayne’s 1,133-page final report.
The government should direct the Auditor-General to conduct an independent audit of Australia’s Big Four banks, in light of the collapsing property bubble to which the major banks are massively exposed.
The Big Lie of the Australian financial system is that it remained sound during the global financial crisis in 2008, due to the effective oversight of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).