Wayne Byers reappointment slammed

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Martin North and John Adams destroy Wayne Byers reappointment:

More at Banking Day:

High profile consumer campaigner Naomi Halpern, who was instrumental in securing parliamentary support for financial advice reforms in 2014, said victims were stunned by the government’s decision to extend Byres’ tenure given that the royal commission was still investigating the enforcement record of APRA.

…Halpern fears that the reappointment is a first step in the federal government’s plan to maintain a “business as usual” approach to financial regulation when the commission’s work ends early next year.

…Denise Brailey, founder of the Banking and Finance Consumers Support Association, also railed against Byres’ reappointment.

“For more than a decade APRA has done very little to protect customers and failed to report misconduct to government,” she said.

“Surely, the government could have waited until the royal commission’s recommendations were released.”

Macquarie University banking academic Pat McConnell said the reappointment looked “silly and unnecessary”.

“Ostrich and sand is the analogy that jumps to mind,” he said.

“ I think it is deliberately pre-empting the process of the royal commission.”

Even Chanticleer could see the illogic:

The early reappointment of Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byres sends a message that is both poorly timed and off-key, given the important questions that have been raised by the royal commission.

Commissioner Ken Hayne’s interim report was so incendiary that it’s easy to forget it only covered the first two-thirds of the commission’s hearings.

One of the hearing rounds it didn’t cover was superannuation, where the ugly underbelly of the sector that manages our retirement savings was laid bare and APRA’s role in regulating the sector was examined.

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For pity’s sake, when the royal commission resumes shortly, it’s final rounds will focus on regulators.

Such is Australian corruption.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.