Some countries will find implementing the Basel III framework a tough challenge. Not Australia, though. As APRA's discussion paper demonstrates, Australia finds itself, in 2011, able to fit Basel III into its existing rules and keep its patterns of bank supervision fundamentally unchanged.Australia is in this comfortable position partly because it imposed relatively tough capital standards during the global boom years. Then Australia's banks escaped the worst effects of the global financial crisis, so they can meet the 2013 Basel III standards pretty much immediately.But beyond embracing most of the Basel III system - despite some known misgivings - Australia has decided to go further. By declaring that Australia will act ahead of the international deadline for implementing Basel III, Australian authorities have taken the opportunity to once again advertise the robust health of Australia's banking system.The official family, including the Reserve Bank and Treasury, wants to send this signal as often and loudly as possible right now. Investors are nervously looking around for the next national financial system out of which they might have to pull their money. Australia doesn't want to be that country. It remains dependent on the rest of the world to finance its soaring mining industry investment. And, while the discussion paper shows there will be a lot of administrative work to be done to tweak capital rules and reporting, APRA's underlying system will barely change at all. Instead, APRA is assimilating the Basel III capital rules: they should eventually become a near-invisible mechanism within its existing machinery. Indeed, APRA will continue to run a prudential system in which formal regulation is less important than informed supervision. Basel III is a system of minimum standards. APRA pays attention to minimum standards, but it worries more about whether bankers are actually behaving sensibly. Its job is to supervise rather than merely police. For some jurisdictions, implementing Basel III will be a traumatic process. For Australia, it's closer to an administrative chore.