The House Standing Committee on Economics is one of parliament’s most powerful institutions. With the ability and tendency to grill financial institutions as well as their regulators, it’s long been an effective vehicle from which backbenchers can pursue policy agendas to devastating effect.

Most notably, in recent years, by Tim Wilson, who used his then-chairmanship of said committee to organise an inquiry into Labor’s proposed removal of cash refunds for franking credits. Or as he called it, the “retiree tax”.