Members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) on Corporations and Financial Services will convene this week to select a new chair.
The committee will vote on a replacement for Bernie Ripoll after Ripoll stepped down as chair following his promotion to Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer under Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s cabinet reshuffle earlier this month.
The meeting would be held ahead of this Friday’s PJC public hearing on Trio Capital’s collapse, he told InvestorDaily.
The changing of the guard should not be taken as a disruption to the committee’s work, he said.
“No-one should be concerned about any disruption to the committee’s work. The bulk of the work, particularly in terms of Trio, has been done. There is another public hearing, which is significant, and look, whoever the new chair will be will be more than capable and skilled to be able to continue the work the committee has done,” he said.
“I’m very confident the good work will continue.”
When asked whether there was a need for a seventh Trio public hearing, particularly in light of the PJC releasing its interim report in November last year, Ripoll said he believed there was.
“Quite simply, when we began investigating and inquiring into Trio there were some quite complex and detailed matters and we felt that as a committee that we gave them the right amount of scrutiny and time to be able to work through those issues,” he said.
“They’re significant, they’re really important and we certainly wanted to do a good job, and so we felt it was necessary to release an interim report and continue the inquiry so we had all the information that we required.”
As well as stepping down as chair, Ripoll will no longer stand as a PJC committee member.
“I’ve obviously been very interested in [areas of financial services reform] over the years and will continue to be so in my new role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, and while [the reforms] don’t come under my area of responsibility, it remains with Bill Shorten as [Financial Services and Superannuation] Minister,” he said.
“But certainly I’m interested by all these issues.”
The PJC has been heavily involved in consultation with Australia’s financial services industry over the past two years.
It has conducted a number of financial services inquiries, including an examination of the federal government’s Future of Financial Advice and Stronger Super reforms as well as the collapse of Trio.
