Australian and UK bank regulators: a comparison: Stavros Primikiris examines the similarities...

Part one: deregulation of Australia's financial system

Australia's current financial system is the result of a wave of deregulation. Since the early 1980s, other factors such as technology, financial innovation and globalisation have also transformed the system.

Within a relatively short period, banks and capital markets were freed from most of the regulatory constraints which had shaped financial markets for decades, impeding efficiency and competition.

Later deregulation was spurred by the 1997 Wallis Report which stemmed from the government-ini