The review touches on everything from credit card fees, superannuation, cyber security, and crowd funding regulation. The Turnbull government has agreed to the vast majority of the Murray review's recommendations. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It has also set up the next three years of political fighting in Canberra at least, with the 'point' of the super system promised to be enshrined in legislation so consumers and industry have policy certainty. The Turnbull government will ask the Productivity Commission to develop an alternative model for a 'formal competitive process' for allocating default super funds to members. It will also ban merchants from charging surcharges on credit cards that are greater than the cost of accepting payment by card.

The Turnbull government says it accepts that Australia's banking system is uniquely run by a minority of powerful banks that source much of their funding offshore, and which provide 90 per cent of the domestic credit to local firms, and that this creates "some concentration of risk in the system." Shops, cabs, and other merchants will be banned from imposing unfair surcharges on credit cards. Credit:Jessica Hromas It says that is why Australia's banks need to be "stronger than those of comparable countries," and why their mortgage risk weights need to increase - a key reason why Westpac Bank lifted rates last week. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the review's recommendations would make Australia's banking system stronger while giving retirees "choice and security" in their retirement years. Australians who were underpaid their super had balances $19,709 or 47 per cent lower than those who had received it. Credit:Karl Hilzinger

He also said it would protect consumers from being charged unfair card surcharges. "These are some of the important outcomes from the Government's response to the Murray inquiry," he said. The government will ask Australia's financial regulators - APRA, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the Reserve Bank's Payments Systems Board - to meet regulatory performance benchmarks. It will also review ASIC's powers, and ask industry to help develop a new ASIC product intervention power that could be used to modify products or remove harmful products from the marketplace. Such system-wide reviews of the financial system do not come around often.

A similar report in 1981, the so-called Campbell Report, led to the historical floating of the dollar and the deregulation of Australia's financial system. That was followed by the Wallis Report in 1997, which helped to streamline financial services regulation and led to the creation APRA and the current form of ASIC. The current review focuses on Australia's super system, following years of scandals in the financial advice industry that have seen hundreds of Australians lose their life savings. The Turnbull government says it will make the financial advice industry 'professional' for the first time, requiring advisers to hold a degree, pass an exam, undertake continuous professional development, and subscribe to a code of ethics. "These higher standards will, for the first time, place financial advising on a similar footing to other professions and in doing so increase consumer trust and confidence in the sector," Mr Turnbull said.

The government's response to the review comes 11 months after it was handed down by its chair David Murray, a former chief executive of Commonwealth Bank. Loading The government says it has agreed to senate amendments to extend unfair contract term protections to small businesses, covering standard form contracts where at least one of the parties employs less than 20 people and where the upfront price of the contract does not exceed $300,000, or $1 million for contracts longer than 12 months. "Australians can now be confident that our financial system remains the best in the world," Mr Turnbull said.