Encouragingly, political parties have largely endorsed the royal commission’s report, and hopefully they can move quickly, although it is hard to see much happening before the federal election. In many cases it is a matter of closing loopholes which bank and insurance company lobbyists cynically wrote into previous attempts to even the balance between consumers and financial companies.

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Commissioner Hayne has demanded, for example, that financial advisers should have a general duty of care to do the right thing by their customers, which they should always have had. He has also asked why funeral insurance and super companies are allowed to hawk their wares over the phone even though this high-pressure selling was banned for most other financial products.

A political battle looms, however, on at least two key questions. The ALP, which claims the credit for forcing the Coalition to hold the royal commission in the first place, is demanding that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg accept Commissioner Hayne’s recommendation to change the business model for mortgage brokers.

Commissioner Hayne said mortgage brokers should be banned from taking commissions from banks because it creates a conflict of interest. He said they should instead charge customers a fee, like doctors or lawyers.

Mr Frydenberg has agreed to ban some types of commission which create the clearest incentives to over-sell mortgages, but he says that mortgage brokers cannot survive without commissions from banks and without small mortgage brokers there will no competition. It would be a pity if a political deadlock prevented any reform.

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Commissioner Hayne has also recommended measures to make it easier for people who shift jobs to keep track of their default super funds and pool them into one fund. The accumulation of all these tiny super funds is inefficient and reduces retirement savings by tens of thousands of dollars.

He says a default fund should follow an individual from job to job, yet there is still no agreement between the parties over how to choose that fund.

Here again Commissioner Hayne has highlighted a problem, but it is up to Parliament to show a long-term commitment to finding a solution.