Andrew Thorburn, NAB CEO today in Parliament:
Thorburn said the bank had decided to stop political donations at all government levels as they wanted “to be respected as a bank and as a company”, under questioning from Greens Adam Bandt.
They said they did not want to be seen by customers as being conflicted and were worried that their donations were being misinterpreted “incorrectly” and they wanted to be seen as “clean”.
He said they decided they could give it up as they “already had good relationships with the banks”.
And yesterday at Domainfax:
One of Australia’s biggest political donors, the National Australia Bank, has quietly announced it will stop giving money to political parties.
According to the bank’s policy statement on political donations, the board of directors “resolved in May 2016 that the making of any political donations would cease with immediate effect”.
All of Australia’s major banks, including ANZ, Westpac and the Commonwealth, give generously to both sides of the political aisle. NAB’s move, if honoured, would make it the first to eschew the practice.
“NAB does not make donations or contribute funds to any political party, parliamentarian, elected official or candidate for political office,” the policy document states.
Bravo. Except for one small problem. Why would NAB buy the milk when it already owns the cow in former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry? Who do you think that the sitting Prime Minister is going to call the moment Australia his its next round of nasty economic turbulence that threatens bank assets?
We know the answer because it already happened when Arrium debt was threatened:
Arrium’s lenders are unsecured creditors, meaning they do not have the authority to push the company into receivership, but as demonstrated yesterday they have the ability to block any unsatisfactory recapitalisation plan.
…South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis yesterday said both the Prime Minister and Premier had been in constant contact over Arrium and had spoken to NAB chairman Ken Henry and chief executive Andrew Thorburn.
Mr Koutsantonis called on Australia’s banks to play a role.
“While the banks are right to consider their balance sheet position, they also have to consider the national interest … we must manufacture our steel here in Australia,” he said.
“Australian banks that operate in this country have social licence and that social licence now is being called in.”
Given how small the ARI issue was and how eminent is Ken Henry’s experience as fiscal engineer, NAB’s chairman is clearly going to not only have the inside run on everything Canberra is doing, he’ll very likely be instructing it beforehand.
Donations pale into insignificance next to this level of control fraud.
