ANZ deepthroat revelations show a failure of government to act on its responsibilities

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Lead Editorial

22 November 2023
Vol. 25 No. 47

22 Nov.—The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) is urging Australians to direct their anger at yesterday’s revelations— that banks are deliberately subjecting customers to maximum inconvenience and deceiving them about branch closures— at the two major parties for their bipartisan “hands-off” attitude towards the banking system.

The ACP is warning that Treasurer Jim Calmers and Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor have stitched up a backroom bipartisan deal that takes that “hands-off” attitude to the extreme, agreeing to push through a bill that will remove the elected government’s responsibility for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

“Australians should be furious that our political leaders have sat on their hands while the major banks have used deliberate deception to rip out essential banking services all across the country”, ACP Research Director Robert Barwick said today.

“They should be equally furious that Chalmers and Taylor have an agreement to essentially abandon their responsibility to ensure the Reserve Bank acts in the best interests of the nation instead of pumping billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars into the mega-profits of the major banks that are treating their customers appallingly.”

ANZ deepthroat exposes branchgate

As Michelle Bowes reported yesterday (21 November) in an exclusive article for news.com.au, an ANZ whistleblower has exposed that ANZ directs staff not to serve customers who visit branches so they are forced to serve themselves at the ATM or telephone, enabling ANZ to use the absence of customers to justify closing branches.

The ANZ deepthroat, whom Michelle Bowes calls Phillip (a fake name to protect his identity), debunked the lie ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott told to the House Economics Committee in July, when he blamed branch closures on customers not using the branches, claiming that “we’re running a business here and we want to be interacting with our customers as much as possible.”

According to Phillip, ANZ directs staff at his bank to have a “digital first mindset” and to direct customers to use the in-branch ATM or telephone, or even to do banking at the ATM for the customers, so the transactions would not be counted in the branch’s service statistics.

He and other staff received email directives like “overthe-counter traffic is up this month, don’t let it get away from you” and “try not to do any card activations in branch this month”; and verbal directives like “all transactions under $1,000 must be done using an ATM”.

Phillip said he quit his job at ANZ the day an elderly, vision-impaired customer was struggling to use an in-branch ATM so he served her at the counter, for which his supervisor questioned him, saying “if customers want service, it’s on our terms”.

Robert Barwick said: “The millions of bank customers who’ve been extremely inconvenienced by long bank queues and wait times now know it was deliberate bank policy to torture their customers into digital banking, to create fake stats to justify branch closures.

“The Senate inquiry into regional bank closures has heard their shocking stories.

“For 25 years the politicians’ excuse for doing nothing while the banks have abused customers has been that governments shouldn’t interfere with ‘commercial decisions’, but remember, these are banks that receive billions in support from the government and RBA.

“It’s time the government ended its hands-off approach and took responsibility for acting on behalf of the people to ensure we have a banking system that serves the people and the economy.”

Barwick said that responsibility must extend to keeping the government’s power to overrule the RBA, which Chalmers and Taylor intend to legislate away.

In this issue:

• Demand Chalmers and Taylor not sell out our democracy
• Rigged banking system gives lie to regulator ‘independence’
• Whitlam’s fate sealed by plan to shut down Pine Gap
• Crown overturns Nuremberg war crimes principle
• Backlash against Gaza genocide hits team Biden
• Development sweeps the ‘global South’
• Belt and Road smears lose traction
• Hate thy neighbour (Part 1)
• Use it, don’t remove it!
• Why secrets still surround the Kennedy assassination
• ALMANAC: The untold story of the US-Soviet manned mission to the moon—Part II

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