{"id":3703,"date":"2023-03-15T05:13:03","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T16:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2023-03-15T05:13:03","modified_gmt":"2023-03-14T16:13:03","slug":"minister-stalls-on-bank-profit-study-after-voting-down-parliamentary-inquiry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=3703","title":{"rendered":"Minister stalls on bank profit study after voting down Parliamentary inquiry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government is giving its strongest indications yet of a Commerce Commission study into bank profits after preventing a shorter select committee inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>It follows a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/business\/485914\/banks-make-new-record-profits-amid-strong-inflation-rising-interest-rates\">new report which found bank profits were 17.3 percent higher<\/a>\u00a0compared to a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Duncan Webb this morning said he was taking advice from the commission and was actively considering the matter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want to do that in a careful and deliberate manner,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we do a market study into banks we want to get the front end right, make sure we get the terms of reference appropriate, so we&#8217;re taking advice from the Commerce Commission and officials on that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really important to know where to look, the scope fo the inquiry whether it&#8217;s more into mortgage rates, or whether it&#8217;s a more broad-based inquiry but we&#8217;re certainly not going to let the banks off the hook.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The National Party had\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/485565\/labour-leaning-towards-commerce-commission-for-bank-profits-inquiry\">called for the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee to carry out a shorter inquiry<\/a>, a proposal which had support from all parties in Parliament except Labour.<\/p>\n<p>Labour used its majority in the committee to vote down that proposal today.<\/p>\n<p>National&#8217;s Finance Spokesperson Nicola Willis said it would have been fast enough to get timely answer for New Zealanders who wanted answers about competition in banking services, and the request was made in good faith.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This was never an either\/or proposition. An open, transparent select committee inquiry would have been a pragmatic step, equipped with powers to summon witnesses and to require the production of information from banks and others. Evidence would have been heard in public, not in the closed interview rooms of a government agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A select committee would not have prevented a Commerce Commission inquiry occurring later &#8211; if warranted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government is giving its strongest indications yet of a Commerce Commission study into bank profits after preventing a shorter select committee inquiry. It follows a\u00a0new report which found bank profits were 17.3 percent higher\u00a0compared to a year ago. Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Duncan Webb this morning said he was taking advice from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3705,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions\/3705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}