He may not know how to fill in his parliamentary application form but he sure knows why it’s there. If there was ever any doubt about what this guy stands for then put it aside:
Nick Xenophon will introduce legislation next year to require the prudential regulator to closely consider the impact of its actions on competition, and the different housing markets across Australia when applying lending limits, in order to help regional and community banks compete on a more level playing field with the majors.
Senator Xenophon told the Community Bank National Conference in Adelaide on Tuesday “a more nuanced, calibrated approach” by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority was required. This could be achieved if APRA “is required by law, in its objectives, not only to take into account its financial stability mandate, as it must, but secondary factors such as competition in the banking sector”, he said.
He also described APRA’s so-called macroprudential policies that limit investor lending growth and interest-only loans as “too blunt an instrument” which “seem to have the effect of consolidating the market power of the big four while nobbling everyone else”.
The comments came as the Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA), which represents credit unions, building societies and mutual banks, called for APRA’s statutory mandate to be amended to include an explicit “secondary competition objective”.
The one sane monetary evolution we have seen in the past few years has been the rise of APRA credit distribution controls. Yet here is Xenoponzi, property magnate, getting in the way again:
- Xenoponzi joins banks to roll SA government
- Xenoponzi protects property money laundering
- Xenoponzi “slum lord” slams negative gearing reform
- Conflicted Xenoponzi’s slum lord past catches up to him
- Xenoponzi backs massive immigration
- Conflicted Xenophon throws sand into gears of housing reform
- Conflicted Xenophon revives super housing fix
For a supposedly independent parliamentarian he sure looks like a mainstream party property incubus.
