Senator IAN CAMPBELL (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) (10:32 AM) —I understand Senator Kemp addressed this amendment in my absence briefly yesterday. I want to make two points. Firstly, as Senator Conroy has pointed out in his contribution he just read, there is already a lot of consultation involved in the process. For the reasons Senator Kemp outlined yesterday, we believe that making it a legislative requirement has a number of negative impacts. I guess it is thus in physics and politics that every move you make has an upside and a downside. We believe that there are a number of significant downsides in regard to this. I am not sure whether Senator Kemp mentioned any, but one of them is where you have cases of distress. Where a merger is required and the interests of depositors could be jeopardised by having to go through this sort of formal process, all of us would want the Treasurer to be able to make an immediate decision. There were examples of that throughout the 1980s and more recently in different parts of the country.

Secondly—and this is a very important point—Senator Conroy has described the processes that took place through the ACCC and a range of other consultations that took place in relation to a recent merger involving the Commonwealth Bank and even Westpac, but he did not talk about the history of what took place when the Labor Party were in power. They always forget what they did with the Commonwealth Bank after campaigning in a federal election—I think it was the 1987 election—to not privatise the Commonwealth Bank. I remember standing at a rally in front of the General Post Office in Forrest Place in Perth where there were a whole range of employees of the Commonwealth Bank picketing and placarding the then leader of the party—I think it was Andrew Peacock in those days—and vowing to stop the Liberals from selling the Commonwealth Bank. Of course within literally weeks of the election Mr Keating sold the Commonwealth Bank.

The closest relationship to this debate, Mr Temporary Chairman Lightfoot, as you will recall well from the time, is that the Labor Party are now supporting a Democrat amendment in relation to consultation on mergers. The Labor Party have commended the Democrats and they have said they worked with the Democrats on this. But I remind all honourable senators of that infamous merger that took place between two of the great Labor icons of the eighties and nineties—the Keating and Kirner icons of the Labor Party—when they negotiated the merger that Senator Conroy and his Victorian Labor comrades want to forget: that is, the merger of the Commonwealth Bank and the State Bank of Victoria. I remember them giving all sorts of guarantees about service and bank branches and so forth. I asked my advisers: what consultation took place in relation to the merger of the Commonwealth Bank and the State Bank of Victoria? Did they consult with a consumer or any consumers? Not one. Did they consult with a consumer organisation? No, not one. Did they consult with the union? No. Did they consult with anyone? No. Mr Keating and Mrs Kirner did the deal and implemented it virtually within 24 hours.

This is the gross hypocrisy of the Australian Labor Party in relation to banking policy generally. This is the gross hypocrisy of a populist opposition with no policy, and in Victoria where Labor govern that state, or pretend to, their policy is similar to that of Mr Beazley: do not have a policy; just have a review. I think at last count they had reviews, roundtables and committees numbering in excess of 80, and Mr Beazley's policies are very similar. When it comes to native title or tax or anything else, the answer every time is: let's have a review. We oppose this amendment for very good reasons. When the vote is taken you will see members of the Victorian division of the Labor Party voting for a legislative requirement for consultation within only a few short years of when the Victorian Labor Party's great icon, that fantastic fiscal manager—quite frankly, that disgrace to Australian politics—Mrs Kirner and Mr Keating, that failed Treasurer, that failed Prime Minister, merged two great institutions, which involved no consultation and no discussion by anybody. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Amendment agreed to.