The AFR wants to repair the image of Evil Anna:
Even Anna Bligh’s staunchest supporters were stunned when the former Queensland premier, who is still a member of the Labor Party, aligned herself with – or worse, put herself at the beck and call of – what many consider a slippery industry: the banks.
“I think it’s good therapy for her,” says former Queensland premier and Bligh’s predecessor, Peter Beattie.
“I’ve seen people go through enormous trauma when they have lost elections. Good for her, and it will be good for the banks if, with a bit of luck, they listen to her.
…It followed a few low-profile years after a devastating defeat as premier. In this time, Bligh moved to Sydney, battled cancer, wrote a book and spent more than two years at the helm of not-for-profit YWCA NSW.
…“The challenge for the banks is to re-earn the trust of Australians, and there’s no easy way out of this. If you want to earn trust you have to be trustworthy, and that means changing some of the things that have become endemic in the industry. Banking has not, either globally or locally, lived up to the expectations of the community and customers.”
So how did Bligh convince herself the bank chiefs really did want someone to shake things up? How was she sure that an industry that has spent decades talking about putting the customer first and culture change wanted to do it this time around?
“I took the fact that they [the banks] were interested in putting me in the position as the strongest possible indicator that they were ready for change,” she says. “Whatever people think about me, I don’t think people think I am a status quo kind of person.”
…Bligh describes the local banks as being in an unprecedented position in terms of public and political scrutiny, exacerbated by specific scandals and poor customer experience, but also part of a broader trend of declining trust in big business and a global backlash against banks, typified by Occupy Wall Street and fallout from the global financial crisis.
…Early on budget day, Bligh sketched out a rough plan of attack with bank chiefs. The Australian Financial Review had reported a bank tax might be in the budget and Treasury had scheduled phone calls with the bank chiefs after the budget. She was in Parliament House on budget night and says she had two thoughts when the tax was revealed.
…She’s more than made up for that since, and the significance of a former Labor premier doing battle with a current one hasn’t been lost on many wondering if it is possible to ever shake the political taint in this role.
…Fraser says Bligh has the best emotional intelligence of anyone he knows, adding: “She’s like a water diviner of opinion. I’ve never seen polling or anything that mitigated against what Anna knew instinctively.”
…Bligh credits NAB chief Andrew Thorburn – the outgoing ABA chair and the man behind her appointment – with pushing the need to accelerate change, though it’s clear she has played a large part as well.
Take the Sedgwick report, for instance, which recommended decoupling the link between performance incentives and sales targets, and was handed in a week before Bligh started. The industry planned to respond within three months, but Bligh and Thorburn moved faster. Bligh sees the remuneration changes as a critical part of rebuilding trust: “Customers should only be offered another banking product when it is clearly in their interests, rather than an offer made as a way of filling a bank employee’s target.” As for why the banks ever lost sight of the customers? Bligh notes it’s always tempting in large organisations to use easily definable measures.
Anna Bligh isn’t giving back to the community by lending her reputation to a banking lobby, fighting against righteous bank taxes (that only partly price public guarantees) and conducting bogus reform such the Sedgewick Review which has dumped its key recommendations. By spearheading a fake reform process, she is doing the opposite, preventing policy reform that ought to be undertaken by national regulators and elected officials on behalf of the people that employ them.
We’re supposed to ignore the half million dollar pay check she gets for doing this? And that she has a fat public pension as well?
I suspect that coming from state politics has badly confused Evil Anna in the same way that is used to muddle Kevin Rudd. Governing a state is all about tactical balancing of various interests behind the scenes to keep the wheels turning. Governing a country – including setting its regulatory and financial architecture – is a strategic process that sets national priorities and rules and fends off sectional interests.
Evil Anna is either personally or intellectually corrupt. You choose.
