At one stage during yesterday's press conference, you could actually hear the focus group statements elbowing their way into Wayne Swan's presentation.His banking package, Swan said, "goes to values … peace of mind ... If you as an Australian who's got a mortgage ... suddenly find you feel you've been treated unfairly by a large financial institution, at the moment it's really difficult for you to break out of that."This Government statement, like many before it, is designed to acknowledge voters' pain, or at least their discomfort with their hefty home loans.With one possible exception, though, the package is unlikely to do much about that discomfort. The hallmark of these reforms is not that they are bad, exactly; it's that they look like intensive tinkering that has chewed up government attention and energy without delivering much in return.Banning exit fees? Not an awful idea, but probably disadvantages non-bank lenders. Portable lenders' mortgage insurance? Likely to raise consumers' up-front insurance costs. Covered bonds? May attract some superannuation fund money but into the Big Four, and at the cost of pledging assets to investors ahead of depositors in a bank wind-up. A new ASIC consumer website? Presumably something like FIDO, ASIC's existing consumer financial website which advises you on how to "shop around for the best deal". The ATM taskforce? Designed to "monitor" the RBA's reforms, which the RBA says are already working. Letting credit unions and building societies call themselves "banks". More than 20 already can, but apparently don't want to. A "price signalling" ban? Good luck making that stick in court. And so on. Not much net gain, but the appearance of action.Swan's qualities as a politician include honesty and a sense of proportion: he rarely over-sells his product. So Swan has said repeatedly that this package is "no silver bullet" that will solve all the system's problems. That's certainly true.If the package is not a silver bullet, what is it? It's more like those packs of Nerf bullets you find in toy guns: they don't leave much impact on their targets, but you'll keep finding them underfoot for ages.Nevertheless, given the community anger at the Big Four banks in recent months, the industry should probably give thanks for the quality of the political argument and the Government's eventual response.Swan's package contains nothing foolish (although the "community awareness campaign to empower consumers in banking" could bring us yet another expensive government TV ad campaign). And Swan's emphasis on competition mechanisms is far preferable to the heavier-handed regulatory alternative.The great danger for Swan is that he is now firmly in the business of promoting credit unions and building societies -  organisations which attract favourable comment in focus groups but whose behaviour cannot be guaranteed to be forever flawless. (Smaller banks are also part of Swan's "fifth pillar", but you'd hardly know it - the focus groups like them less.) If a mutual or credit union gets itself into trouble in the next few years, Swan will suffer.The one reform in the