government has indicated that additional policy measures will be announced shortly. australian public finances are in good shape and the country's history of prudent fiscal management gives us the capacity to respond now. the banks too have an important role to play in building that bridge to the recovery by supporting their customers. without this support, it will be harder for us all to get to the other side in reasonable shape. australia has a strong financial system, which is well placed to provide the needed support to businesses and households. the system has strong capital and liquidity positions and our financial institutions have invested heavily in resilience. as apra confirmed this afternoon in a public statement, the current large buffers of capital and liquidity are able to be used to support ongoing lending to the economy. 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches the financial regulators have also confirmed that they are examining how the timing of various regulatory initiatives might be adjusted to allow financial institutions to concentrate on their businesses and work with their customers. apra and asic both stand ready to assist institutions work through regulatory issues arising from the virus. the council of financial regulators is meeting again tomorrow and will also meet with the largest lenders to discuss how they can support their customers and whether there are any regulatory impediments in the way. the reserve bank itself is also playing a role in building that bridge to the recovery. i will now turn to that. our major focus is to support jobs, incomes and businesses, so that when the health crisis recedes the country is well placed to recover strongly. supporting small business over coming months is a particular priority. prior to today's announcement, we had already taken several steps over recent days to support the australian economy. over the past week or so we have been injecting substantial extra liquidity into the financial system through our daily market operations. as part of this effort, we will be conducting onemonth and three - month repo operations each day. we will also conduct repo operations of sixmonth maturity or longer at least weekly, as long as market conditions warrant. as a result of these liquidity operations, exchange settlement balances have increased from around $ 2. 5 billion a month ago to over $ 20 billion today. the reserve bank also stands ready to purchase australian government bonds in the secondary market to support its smooth functioning. the government bond market is a key market for the australian financial system, because government bonds provide the pricing benchmark for many financial assets.

, in many cases, this argument is lack of a perspective of financial innovation. it would be very difficult indeed to enhance value added in the finance industry without using innovation to flexibly adapt to dynamic economic developments. we must therefore consider approaches to promoting innovation while also maintaining the stability of the system. in doing so, we must pay attention to the two forms of innovation : one is achieved by the consolidation and attrition of companies and the other is achieved within a single company. japan has a large number of " long - established " companies, a fact that illustrates the process of innovation in the latter sense that has taken place again and again over time. financial sector is no exception : innovation occurs primarily within banks. therefore, promoting innovation in the financial sector can be seen as a question of promoting a " scrap and build process " within organizations as the environment changes. the current global financial crisis raises significant issues for financial institution risk management and supervisory regulation. in my remarks today, i have described some of the very active debates that are currently taking place. japan experienced the rupture of an asset bubble in the early 1990s and a prolonged period of financial and economic stagnation thereafter. we therefore have the advantage of being able to discuss issues realistically on the basis of our experiences. i look forward to greater contributions to the debate from the japanese academic community, and with that hope i would like to close my remarks today. thank you for your kind attention.