Via Banking Day:
Kenneth Hayne, 72, a conservative and a former justice of the High Court of Australia has the gig as the sole commissioner of the planned royal commission into misconduct in financial services.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced the selection of Hayne on Friday, a day after the government set out the draft terms of reference for a highly political inquiry.
The details of those terms may be the subject of pointed debate in Canberra this week, with the House of Representatives returning to work.
The more vocal consumer campaigners for a royal commission into the sector are not giving Hayne the benefit of any doubt that he might provide a form of justice for victims of bank misconduct.
Denise Brailey, founder and chief stirrer at the Banking and Finance Consumers Support Association, wrote on Facebook over the weekend that she was still looking for “a full blown Royal Commission into the banks and regulators that runs for a minimum of two years, is fully funded for as long as it takes, and has two dependable Commissioners – hopefully three. Not a close mate of John Howard’s,” as Ken Hayne is inferred to be.
The draft terms of reference for Hayne, Brailey said, “will ensure this Bankers RC is labelled a failure. People will get even angrier.
“We want a wide terms of reference and more than enough time to give farmers, business owners as well as residential investors their fair share of time to tell their stories, present file reports and get to the truth.”
A Rhodes Scholar in 1969, Hayne joined the Victorian bar in 1971, taking silk as QC in 1984. He was first appointed to the bench in 1992 as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, later serving on the Victorian Court of Appeal until his appointment to the High Court in 1997. Hayne retired in 2015.
We’ll see. I was skeptical of David Murray and he did a great job.
