Usually I have to put in a little effort to expose the hilarity of Aussie politics but not today, from The Australian:
Malcolm Turnbull has branded Bill Shorten a fake “populist champion” — a latter-day Jack Lang — over his push for a banking royal commission, launching an attack in federal parliament to warn of Labor’s links to industry super funds that compete with the major banks and could win from the inquiry.
…With the spectre of increased political interference looming, millions of smaller investors face lower returns from their direct and indirect shareholdings in the nation’s top-four banks.
…AustralianSuper, which has more than two million members, had a $92 billion investment portfolio at the end of the 2015 financial year, of which one-quarter was invested in Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank. AustralianSuper’s deputy chairman is ACTU secretary Dave Oliver and several other former or serving union officials are directors.
As the Turnbull government announced that Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell would have “royal commission powers” to probe unconscionable conduct by the banks, the head of the financial system inquiry, David Murray, warned that an encroachment of politics into banking could “seriously put at risk the returns that investors rely on”.
So, the royal commission is a disaster but the inquiry with “royal commission powers” is all good? We now have:
- an industry inquiry into bank remuneration structures pretending to be independent;
- a global litigation over big bank BBSW manipulation playing out in New York courts;
- a sort of slow motion prosecution of same at home via an inept ASIC;
- and now a new government inquiry into mistreatment of small business.
Plus there are unresolved questions about the bank’s treatment of staff, treatment of whistleblowers, conduct at financial planning and insurance arms, the serial failure of the regulator and what on earth is going on at the secret cult we call APRA.
There is no co-ordination in the investigation. No accountability in it. It can’t by definition map out the full landscape of the financial system and regulators to identify the weak spots driving misconduct and therefore can’t offer any constructive reform, either.
You’re a dead set dunce, Malcolm.
