Pacific Banking Guarantee Bill 2025

Mr McCORMACK (Riverina) (17:13): I thank the member for Shortland, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, for his kind words about me. I thank him for his actions and involvement with the Pacific. Let's not be partisan about the Pacific.

We need statesmen and stateswomen, we need diplomacy and we need team Australia when it comes to the Pacific. It's too important to allow any other foreign interests or any other incursions into the Pacific. That is why the minister and I have been very firm about what's important to Australia and very firm about what's important to the Pacific island nations we call family and we call friends.

He and I would agree that, when it comes to faith, family and football, the Pacific and Australia are as one, and we need to continue, irrespective of who forms the next government. You and I, Deputy Speaker Georganas, have been on overseas trips together before in various delegations. Hopefully we'll get to do that again.

When Australian politicians and members of parliament, senators et cetera travel overseas, foreign countries need to see us at our best, and they need to see us speaking as one. When it comes to the Pacific, we need to do just that. The Pacific Banking Guarantee Bill 2025 is an important piece of legislation.

I know just how important the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme is, because my electorate benefits from it. The remittances that go back to the Pacific island nations—for some of those tiny countries, they are more than half of their gross domestic product. It is something those families back home rely on very much, and it's earned in various capacities.

It's horticulture and it's agriculture, but it's more than that. It's in so many areas of endeavour. Australia relies on Pacific workers, and those from other international countries besides, to ensure that we can get the jobs done that cannot be filled by Australians—by our own citizens.

We very much thank, admire and value the efforts made, particularly by those PALM workers. It really came home to me when I attended a very sad farewell on Sunday 16 March at the North Wagga Hall. The previous week, a young woman—just 41—passed away.

Her name was Tuota Kirition, and she inexplicably passed away at the Teys Meatworks. Teys were very much in there offering support and whatever they could to her family and to her many friends. I was in the front row at that memorial service.

Sometimes, when you're sitting in the front row, you don't get an appreciation for just how many people are in that hall, but, when I glanced around, the hall—and it's only a small hall—was filled to overflowing. There were more than 400 mourners who turned up. So I want to pay tribute.

It is very much relevant to the topic of debate because she had a 15-year-old daughter back home. She was in Australia, in about her third year working here, and sending the money back to Kiribati. She was sending the money back so that her daughter could have a better life.

She was sending the money by banks to ensure that her daughter, her village, her community and her island could have better outcomes. All too sadly, she's passed away in Wagga Wagga. It struck me so vividly that, at the end of the service, her female friends and all the women there were virtually moved to one side of the hall, and the men—big, robust men as they were—had prepared the food.

They moved the chairs. They put the tables out. They laid on the feast that followed and allowed the women to mourn.

You could see the love and support and family. They weren't all related, but they were all family. It was a very moving service, and I want to pay tribute to Pastor Jerry Rokosuka and all of the island nations that turned up to farewell Tuota, because it was a moving service.

I know her loss will be felt keenly in Kiribati, no more so than by her teenage daughter. Australia is better for having her work in that PALM scheme, for her coming to our city and for contributing what she did. I know Teys will continue to work with her family, her community and, indeed, all her island friends to make sure that she is remembered and that she is supported, and that is a good thing.

On this Pacific Banking Guarantee Bill, we heard the minister outline the fact that an arrangement was struck between the Commonwealth Bank and Nauru when Bendigo withdrew, and we acknowledge that. We acknowledge all the banks which have for many decades operated in the Pacific, because it is important. I know the minister would be interested to hear this, and I know he probably made representations as well when financial institutions—and not necessarily Australian ones—were taking too much of the remittances and it was actually difficult for the people in the island nations to withdraw their money or to have access to that money.

I know that he and I would both be as one when it comes to ensuring that the money that was sent back home went straight into the bank accounts and that they received, but for maybe some minor adjustments, full recompense for their labours. That's critically important. The guarantee covered by this particular legislation supports Australian authorised deposit-taking institutions—ADIs—operating in the Pacific region to maintain vital banking services there.

The minister; the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Penny Wong; and the former shadow foreign affairs minister Senator Simon Birmingham from South Australia; and I have travelled to the Pacific together, although we didn't all come home in the same state! We went there as team Australia. We went there as one.

Mr Conroy: Doing your country proud. Mr McCORMACK: We were enthusiastic—thank you, Minister, we were. I look forward to working closely with the member for Banks in what will, hopefully, be a future coalition government to build upon the work that is being done in this term, to build upon the work—and the minister and I might diverge here—done in the previous coalition government.

We did do some good things, and every Australian government, going right back to Howard and, no doubt, even before that, has done good things in the Pacific, because it's too important not to. While I do respect Minister Wong—and she knows that—I pay acknowledgement to former foreign affairs minister Senator Marise Payne for the work that she did in the step-up campaign.

It might not have been to the taste or liking of the minister opposite, but she certainly did have her heart in the right place when it came to the Pacific. We all, not just those who sit in shadow ministry or ministry—every single one of us has an obligation to the Pacific. At every opportunity that we have, we need to bed down those relationships and make sure the Pacific knows—as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has often said—that we should be their first partner of choice.

As the minister noted in his remarks, when disaster strikes, we are there with HMAS vessels; and we're there with our men and women in khaki, providing fresh water, providing logistics and providing support. It's very important. Several Western banks have scaled back or closed Pacific operations in recent years, leaving some nations without reliable access to global financial systems.

I know how important our banking relationships are. I met with ANZ Bank representatives in Port Vila on my very first trip to Vanuatu, and I thank them on behalf of the nation for the work that they did. I know that we need to ensure that, with legislation such as this and any other Pacific legislation, the Pacific knows that we are their best friends.

We don't want to create opportunities for nations who have less-than-ideal endeavours or vision for the Pacific than we do as Australia. We need to make sure the Pacific know that we're there for them in finance, infrastructure, funding, aid—and football! Good luck to the Kumuls, and good luck with the future Pacifica team in the National Rugby League.

The ANZ has, as the minister said, been a firm friend of the Pacific. I know NAB has been there. I know Westpac has been there.

What we don't want to see is any other nation having an in there that we would otherwise not want them to have. The government has announced partnerships with ANZ, Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia to support their operations in the Pacific. Thank you; that's good.

Well done. In exchange for the guarantee, the banks will need to pay a fee to the Commonwealth. That's fair enough.

It would guarantee that they would be called on if the banks or their subsidiaries suffered a default for the Pacific operations. It's too important to be suffering defaults. We need to have successful financial operations because it's not only good for the government and Pacific relations; it should be good for the banks.

Banks have a responsibility—let's call it a social licence—to do the right thing in the Pacific, because banks make good money. Let's not beat around the bush. When you see the bottom lines that banks produce, they do very nicely, thank you very much, and they do very nicely because of the goodwill of Australian customers.

They also do very nicely out in the Pacific, but, if they have to take a bit of a haircut on the Pacific, well, that's just a social licence that they have to continue to operate in Australia when they make the sorts of profit margins that they do. Let me tell you, if the Pacific doesn't go as well as what we would all like, then their profit margins in Australia might well be trimmed.

People can read into that whatever they like, but I think our banking sector is smart enough to know exactly what I'm talking about. By establishing a special appropriation in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the legislation provides a framework for ensuring an Australian-bank-specific business or guaranteeing it. Its primary objectives—its main purposes—are to uphold banking services, particularly those crucial for trade and remittances, like that PALM money that goes back to Pacific island nations, and to maintain economic connectivity for Pacific nations.

The minister and I both know that this is of vital importance. While officials consider the likelihood of calling on the guarantee to be low, its main purpose is to keep the banks operating in Pacific island countries where profitability can be challenging. Refer back to what I said before about the social licence to operate.

Profitability can be challenging, but we call on those banks. We don't then need them to get all nervous if the profits aren't what they expect—if, indeed, they might have to suffer a little loss. Ultimately, in the long run, we all know that everything will be okay.

Everything will be fine. They will make the money, and our PALM scheme will continue to operate. I know the minister and I have had differences of opinions over the number of hours worked and all that, but I think he and I also are as one that PALM needs to operate and needs to continue.

It was an invention of the Gillard government, in fact, and we enhanced it and improved it. We certainly know how important those Pacific Australian Labour Mobility workers are to our nation. I say vale to the Wagga Wagga Pacific worker who died recently.

But this is legislation which needs to be passed, and I thank the minister for bringing it to the House.