Senior Coalition figures signal commissioner will be granted extension if needed as Warren Entsch calls for banks to be penalised if ‘they have stolen from others’ • Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noon

Key government agitators for the banking royal commission say they are concerned the inquiry has been given too little time to unearth wrongdoing – and that executive bonuses and profits need to be examined.



The Nationals senator John Williams told Guardian Australia the inquiry needed to be conducted forensically, as senior Turnbull government figures moved on Thursday to signal that the commissioner, Kenneth Hayne, would be granted an extension if he sought it.

“What I am concerned about is the time. Will Commissioner Hayne run out of time?” Williams said.

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“Now, he’s got to give an interim report in September and wind up next February. My attitude is, if you’re going to do the job do it properly. If he gets it done in that time, well and good. But if he needs more time then the government should grant him more time.”

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The commission is due to deliver a final report by February 2019.

The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said the government was in Hayne’s hands. “If the royal commissioner says to us that there is more work to be done, that he needs more time, then obviously the government would act on that,” Cormann told 2GB.

Another of the longtime government agitators for a banking inquiry, the Queensland Liberal Warren Entsch, said the only way to get financial institutions to change their behaviour was “to recover some of those profits, with a penalty, that they have stolen from others”.

“It’ll start to impact on their bottom line, and I can assure you that will really get their attention,” Enstch told Guardian Australia. “The CEOs will start to lose their bonuses, and their investors, many of whom are superannuation funds, start to see reductions in dividends, that will get a focus on culture change like nothing else.

“Let them make as much profit as they can, but only in an honest and ethical way, and not at the expense of individuals that they feel quite comfortable in doing over and then walking away with absolutely no ramifications.”

The opening phase of the royal commission has heard evidence of appalling behaviour by Australia’s major banks and financial planners over the last decade.

There has been evidence of alleged bribery, forged documents, repeated failure to verify customers’ living expenses before lending them money, misselling insurance to people who couldn’t afford it, lying to regulators about their practices and charging customers fees for service they never received.

The financial services minister, Kelly O’Dwyer, declined on Thursday to express contrition for the government’s previous opposition to a banking royal commission, and she said a proposal pushed by Labor for 18 months would have only looked at conduct by the banks.

“The revelations that, obviously, we have heard about AMP are included in scope because of the inquiry that we have put in place,” O’Dwyer said.

“And frankly, I think we are hearing things that would mean that we have done the right thing in introducing a royal commission and we are looking forward to the recommendations that will be made by the independent royal commissioner.

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“Initially, the government said that it didn’t feel that there was enough need for a royal commission. And we re-evaluated our position and we introduced one.”

The former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has been more forthright about the government’s misjudgment.

Barnaby Joyce (@Barnaby_Joyce) In the past I argued against a Royal Commission into banking. I was wrong. What I have heard is so far is beyond disturbing.

Enstch said the evidence to date confirmed “things that we pretty much suspected all along, you know, which is absolute bastardry on the part of financial institutions and how they have ripped off people for years and years and years”.

“So they’re not telling us anything that we don’t already know in relation to the activities – but what they’re doing is going into the detail.”

Williams said he thought the terms of reference for the inquiry covered the bases. “I think the terms of reference are adequate because they cover a broad sector of lending, investment, superannuation, financial planning and advice. They’re working well, given what evidence has been brought forward.”

Entsch said if the scope of the inquiry was broadened “more and more victims are going to die without having the opportunity of recovering their losses”.

“We know what the sins of these bloody people are, in fact it’s even worse than anybody even anticipated, but if we keep going further into the detail without engaging the victims, without bringing them to the fore, and establishing a mechanism that allows them to recover their losses, what happens is many of these victims will die before there’s any chance of getting back what they’ve lost.”