New banking scandals ‘inevitable’ says new assistant treasurer Stuart Robert

Incoming assistant treasurer Stuart Robert warns future scandals are “inevitable”, vowing to resist pressure for heavy regulation.

Incoming assistant treasurer Stuart Robert in his electorate office at Labrador on the Gold Coast. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Incoming assistant treasurer Stuart Robert has warned that future banking scandals are “inevitable”, vowing to resist left-wing pressure to regulate the financial system to “within an inch of its life”.

Drawing an election battleline on the hot-button issue of financial regulation, Mr Robert yesterday backed “self-regulation” as essential to preventing the sorts of abuses exposed at the banking royal commission.

The Gold Coast MP, who returns to the ministry after two years in the political wilderness, championed regulation to “knock the hard edges” off the economy but warned that the finance sector should not be lumbered with “the dead weight of government”.

Describing himself as a “very strong free-marketeer”, Mr Robert said: “We’re not here to ‘let the market rip’ at all — that’s nonsense — but we’re also not here to regulate it to within an inch of its life, which is what Labor wants to do.

“We want to provide confidence to the Australian people that there is a regulatory structure that is transparent and open, that they can have confidence in, and there is a financial sector that is also self-regulating itself.”

Mr Robert said that, just as there would always be road accidents, ­financial scandals were “inevitable”. However, he said, the scale of wrongdoing could be reduced through “sensible” policies that drive cultural change, backed up by strong regulators with “teeth”.

Mr Robert, one of the Coalition’s best fundraisers, said he expected to have portfolio responsibility for ­financial services, superannuation and regulatory reform. A longtime flatmate of Scott Morrison, Mr Robert resigned from the ministry in 2016 after he helped a major Liberal donor, Nimrod Resources, seal a lucrative business deal in China while he was assistant defence minister. Mr Robert also held shares in the firm, it later emerged.

Mr Robert was also the subject of a probe by Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission over his secret bankrolling of “independent” candidates for council elections, although the watchdog found “insufficient evidence” of wrongdoing.

Mr Robert, when asked about these rows, said he was “probably the most clear person in the ­parliament” having been thoroughly investigated by the federal police.

The finance sector is likely to loom large at the election due next May. Opposition financial services spokeswoman Clare O’Neill yesterday attacked Mr Morrison as “the best friend” the big banks had had. “Scott Morrison and the Liberals cannot be trusted to crack down on banking misconduct, and they cannot be trusted to implement the recommendations of a royal commission that they never wanted in the first place,” she said.