Weekly Update: 4th August 2023

“Every time I hear these stories it breaks my heart, and it strengthens my resolve to want to lift the standard and improve protections right across the economy for Australians who are affected by this, $3 billion in the last year. It’s a crisis and more needs to be done, a Team Australia effort having business, having telecommunications companies, banks, social media platforms and government working together. don’t anticipate that there will be an election this year. But quite clearly we have a mandate for [the Housing Australia Future Fund bills]. We want this to be passed. The way to ensure that this doesn’t provide a [double dissolution] trigger is to pass the legislation.” 

– Assistant Treasurer, The Hon. Stephen Jones MP, 3rd August 2023

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Parliamentary Update:

• The Federal Government’s Housing Australia Future Fund bills were reintroduced into the House of Representatives, as previously foreshadowed by the Prime Minister. Following debate in the House in coming weeks, the bills will head to the Senate. The Australian Greens continue to oppose the bills at the current time.  
• Housing Minister Julie Collins appeared on ABC News Breakfast and the Today Show discussing the housing bills.  
• The Financial Accountability Regime bills were not dealt with by the Senate this week and could be dealt with next week.   
• Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones announced a Parliamentary Inquiry into insurer responses to the 2022 floods. The Assistant Treasurer said “The inquiry will take a whole of economy view of the ongoing challenges faced by intense and frequent flood events. It is consumer focused ‑ investigating land use planning, affordability of coverage, supply chain issues, labour shortages, claims handling, and dispute resolution processes.” 
• The Assistant Treasurer also appeared in an interview with Madeleine Morris on ABC News Breakfast where he discussed scams.  

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Policy Update:

• ACCC provided an interim authorisation for ABA and member banks to participate in discussions to develop an industry standard to prevent, detect, and disrupt scams affecting individual and small business customers. 
• The ABA travelled to north-east Arnhem land to attend the annual Garma Festival on Yolgnu country. Garma is the largest First Nations gathering for the expression and presentation of traditional Yolngu knowledge systems and customs. It brings together representatives from First Nations communities, industry, government and academia.  
• Treasury hosted a roundtable on the Quality of Advice Review attended by ABA and member banks. Topics discussed included the broadening of personal advice and what is meant by the good advice duty. Members also raised concerns with the implications of the drafting of recommendations 1 to 4.  
• The ABA and McKinsey held a Financial Crime roundtable on Thursday 3rd August. The panel discussed ways to improve financial crime risk outcomes while also enhancing the analyst experience and creating workforce capacity, the challenges and solutions for financial crime regulation in Australia, as well as the best practices from global banks and global trends emerging in GenAI.  
• The ACCC has not approved the granter merger authorisation for ANZ Banking Group to acquire Suncorp Group.

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Regulatory Update:

• ASIC released its enforcement and regulatory update from April – June 2023. They issued $109.1 million in civic penalties in the half year to June 2023. 
• The ATO released its 2023-24 Corporate Plan with focus areas including: improving small business tax performance, protecting the system and clients against fraud, as well as multinational tax performance among others. 

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Economic Update:

• The RBA let the cash rate at 4.10 per cent, citing the rapid rise in interest rates over the past year as well as the uncertain economic outlook as the main reasons for doing so. 
• In June 2023, retail turnover rose 2.3 per cent compared with June 2022, but fell 0.8 per cent compared with May 2023. Overall, retail turnover has stabilised over the past 6 months after a period of growth post-COVID. 

• Increases in the cost of living index have exceeded the increases in the consumer price index among all household types, with employee households experiencing the greatest growth (9.6%) between June 2022 and June 2023, Figure 2a. 
• The group with the greatest contribution to increases in costs among all household types was ‘financial and insurance services’ which includes mortgage repayments as well as other loans and insurance products, Figure 2b. 

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Communications and Media:

• The ABA fielded a series of media enquiries following the ACCC issuing an interim authorisation enabling banks to participate in discussions to develop industry initiatives to prevent, detect, disrupt and respond to scams.
  • The ABA provided the following media statement: “Australian banks have been working hard on initiatives they can each take to help keep Australians safe from the scourge of scams. The ACCC’s authorisation will allow banks to focus on more collective initiatives to prevent and disrupt scams, as well as work with telcos, social media and crypto platforms on initiatives those industries can take to stop scams at the source.” 

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Upcoming Submissions:

Published submissions

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Selected Media:

Australian banks allowed to collaborate on development of industry standards to combat scams. | ACCC
SMH – Household bank deposits drop $7.7b, in first decline in two years
AFR – RBA’s new wait-and-see rates agenda
Financial Review – Google’s search feature can feature criminal malware 
SMH – Recession risk as RBA weighs inflation-busting interest rate rise

Weekly Update