Just as Costello commissioned a Financial Services Enquiry back in 1996/97 while he was selling off Australia's gold reserves, Joe ("Build it and they will come") Hockey is commissioning a new Financial Services Enquiry. Unlike Costello though, I don't think Hockey can find any Gold reserves to sell at the moment. Costello positioned his enquiry as preparing Australia for a ''whole wave of change'' set to move through the Australian financial system. I wonder if Hockey is pre-empting another wave of change. Here are the new enquiry's terms of reference: PDF It includes the explicit limitation I will be intrigued to see how it handles the RBA's $300B Committed liquidity Facility (CLF) that is due to be introduced in 2015 and how it positions the RBA's purchase of self-rated, collateralised debt obligation (CDO) derivatives from the sub-prime mortgage portfolios of the big banks and its impact on the Australian financial system. It will be included in its consideration of the Basel III code within section 3.2, most likely. Given all the talk of bail-in frameworks and government interest in distributing retirement savings around the world, I'm not sure I like the positioning of point 3.3 too much. Hopefully they are speaking of "Australia" in the broadest sense and will not be addressing the Government needing to source or distribute capital from savings! The report is due to be published by November 2014. I am sure there will be opportunity to make submissions to the enquiry for those inclined. The current Treasury Department resources are available here.
