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This week in Canberra, I successfully sponsored a motion in the Senate, together with Independent
Senator Nick Xenophon and National Party Senator John Williams, otherwise known as 'Wacka'
Williams, to set up a new inquiry looking into banking competition through the Senate
economic references comittee, of which I am chair.
This inquiry is designed to have a pretty thorough examination of the current state
of competition in the banking industry because over the last two years a lot has changed.
As an example of that, we've seen the share that the four big banks have in the housing
loan market move from about 50 percent up to 80 percent. Now thats a pretty heavily
concentrated banking market.
So what we want to do is and the intention of moving this inquiry, or holding this inquiry
is to see what the current state of competition is and have a good thorough examination of
where the banking industry currently is, what's led to that concentration occurring and what
we can do about opening it up because ultimately if we can get more competition back into the
banking market it can only be a good thing for the millions of Australian home buyers
and all the small businesses that need finance to be able to get on and do their jobs and
employ people. But more than that, because of the impact that the financial industry
actually has on the overall economy, you only have to look at what happened in North America
a couple of years ago what happens when banks go bad so, it's important that we have a healthy,
competitive industry in the banking sector and that's what this inquiry is all about
and that's why we're holding it. So we're going to get stuck into it and see what we
find out.