LIVE Banking and finance royal commission findings

Alleging banks and financial service providers had trashed basic standards of honesty and put greed before people, Mr Frydenberg said the report "shined a very bright light on the poor behaviour of our financial sector".

The government has spent months apologising for its near two-year opposition to the royal commission, while Labor rolled out attack ads on Friday, telling voters Prime Minister Scott Morrison blocked the inquiry 26 times before he was forced to retreat in the wake of an internal revolt.

Labor effectively gave Commissioner Hayne carte blanche to rewrite the financial regulation rulebook, vowing on Friday to implement whatever he recommends in his final report if they win government.

"Given what we have seen of the interim report, given the stories that have been told by victims of the financial sector misconduct, we think it's very important to act swiftly and decisively to clean up this industry," Acting Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek said.

"The old tradition was that the banks were your friend, but not anymore. Now it's all about greed and the basic standards of honesty have gone awry," she says.

Hayne, in his interim report on the banking royal commission handed down on Friday, has highlighted the shortcomings of the regulators, "who have not done anything", says Waller, who spent 34 years as a school teacher and farmer, raising sheep and cattle as well as breeding horses.

In some of the most explosive testimony given to the commission, AMP executive Anthony "Jack" Regan in April admitted it may have made as many as 20 false and misleading statements to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Commissioner Hayne said he had no reason to doubt this evidence.

“Through AMP’s dealings with ASIC regarding both the extent and nature of its fee for no service reporting, AMP adopted an attitude toward the regulator that appears to me, and at the time appeared to ASIC, not to be forthright and honest,” Hayne writes.

“Indeed, the statements made could be seen as a deliberate attempt to mislead.”

He also said AMP may have misled ASIC when it claimed that a Clayton Utz report into the affair was “external and independent,” pointing out that 22 drafts of the report were provided to AMP.

“In particular, having regard to the number and nature of the changes made to drafts of the report, it may be open to conclude that AMP knew that the report was not an independent report,” he said. “ Conduct of that kind, if established, might be misconduct.”

Hayne says that as the matter is already being considered by ASIC, he doesn’t need to consider referring the matter to the corporate cop.

“I have had the opportunity to read the summary of the Royal Commission interim report and will review the report in more detail over the weekend. I would like to thank the Commissioner for his thoroughness and diligence.

“For us at NAB, where we have made mistakes or done the wrong thing, we will own them and fix them.

“It is difficult to face the statement of ‘profits before people’, but this is exactly what we need to confront. Banking was built on putting people first and earning the trust of customers. We must return to these principles once again, rather than continuing to be short term managers.”

And ASIC chair James Shipton was quick to note the report’s serious and important observations of ASIC’s role as a regulator.

"ASIC will carefully consider these observations, as well as the broader findings in the report, and will respond fully in its submission by 26 October 2018.

ASIC will continue to assist the Royal Commission and to work with the Government, the Parliament and other regulators to build a stronger legislative, enforcement and regulatory framework with tougher penalties," he said.

Maybe it was all the footy in the air.

The main take-outs from his press conference was that ASIC had been too willing to negotiate and not keen enough to litigate against banks behaving badly, the regulator can probably have more money, but it will have to ask first.

Oh, and in news that will surprise nobody, if Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne wants to extend his inquiry, he too only has to say the word.

The Treasurer said Commissioner Hayne’s interim report laid bare a culture among the nation’s financial institutions that put “profit before people”.

“Greed has been the motive and short term profits have been pursued at the expense of basic standards of honesty,” Mr Frydenberg said.

Banks and other institutions were operating with relative impunity, looks like.

“This interim report also makes clear that while behaviour was poor, misconduct when revealed ‘either went unpunished or the consequences did not meet the seriousness of what has been done’”, The Treasurer declared.

“ASIC, the Commissioner points out, rarely went to court to seek public denunciation of and punishment for misconduct.”

“Significantly, the Commissioner observes that infringement notices imposed penalties that were immaterial for the large banks.”

In Commissioner Hayne’s words:

“Too often, entities have been treated in ways that would allow them to think that they, not ASIC, not the Parliament, not the courts will decide when and how the law will be obeyed or the consequences of the breach remedied.”

Josh said that bit twice, in case anybody wasn’t paying attention.

On the all-important question of the timing of the release of the Royal Commission's interim report on a public holiday in Melbourne and on the eve of the AFL AND NRL grannies?

You taking out the trash or what, Josh?

"If we had sat on this report, because it was handed to the Governor-General today, you would have said 'what are you hiding?" the Treasurer assures us.

...and yes, there was a question on why the Turnbull government fought tooth-and-nail against this Royal Commission. Some bloke, can't remember who, even called the idea a "populist stunt".

"We are the ones who got the Royal Commission up and running, we're the ones who added superannuation and insurance to the terms-of-reference and we're the ones who are implementing important reforms," Mr Frydenberg said.

Guess that's sorted, then.

This has led to some concerns from the commission that the banks do not have their houses in order.

“The difficulties raised by NAB, and by others, about meeting the Commission’s requests suggest that those entities deal with regulatory compliance piecemeal rather than comprehensively,” he said.

“Approaching compliance piecemeal does not readily permit identification of underlying causes,” Mr Hayne said.

"Charging for doing what you do not do is dishonest. No-one needs legal advice to tell them that. The root cause for what happened was greed; the greed of both licensees and advisers," the report says.

Commissioner Hayne says the licence-holders, which included banks, treated the "provision of ongoing services as a matter of no concern to them," and advisers often acted as if the fees were trail commissions that could be collected without providing anything in return.

"Whether the conduct is said to have been moved by ‘greed’, ‘avarice’, or ‘the pursuit of profit’, it is conduct that ignored the most basic standards of honesty," he wrote.

He says licencees "did nothing to stop it and they took the proceeds."

"The conduct of licensees and advisers was inexcusable and no-one has since tried to excuse it," he says.

Commissioner Hayne has also questioned whether banks and other "manufacturers" of financial products should be banned from providing advice- a model known as "vertical integration."