Citizen-led resistance undoes anti-democratic RBA plot

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Lead Editorial

28 February 2024
Vol. 26 No. 9

Report from Canberra: While nothing is final until the Senate vote, the plot to repeal Section 11 of the Reserve Bank Act 1959 and place the central bank outside of democratic authority lies in shambles, and the plotters are squealing.

This plot was for all intents and purposes signed and sealed in April last year, when Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor gave full bipartisan endorsement to the RBA Review recommendations released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

A release Taylor issued on 20 April 2023 welcomed the Review, declaring:

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said it was enormously important Australia has an independent, credible and capable Reserve Bank. “As the review indicates, the Reserve Bank of Australia has served Australia well for a long period of time and played a crucial role in ensuring Australia emerged from the pandemic in a position of economic strength”, Mr Taylor said. “But with inflation at its highest level in three decades, it is essential Australians can have confidence in this crucial economic institution. This is why it’s critical the lessons of the pandemic are learned, and that the Reserve Bank has no distractions getting in the way of its core objectives. The recommendations of the review will clarify the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy role, strengthen its governance arrangements, improve the transparency of its decision making, and deepen its economic expertise.”

The RBA Review itself had emphasised the importance of bipartisan support to get its recommendations passed, and even warned that if the legislation to implement the reforms didn’t get bipartisan support, it should be dropped in favour of alternative approaches.

That’s when the Australian Citizens Party sprang into action, releasing the YouTube video “The ultimate betrayal of the Australian people” and mobilising thousands of citizens across Australia to call and email politicians to express their opposition.

The Greens, One Nation, and individuals in the major parties also started speaking out in opposition, as did retired politicians and officials.

The result was the Senate hearing last Thursday, when a succession of former politicians and officials including former Treasurer Peter Costello, and former RBA Governors Ian Macfarlane and Bernie Fraser expressed their opposition. (p. 5)

That hearing, which was devastating to the government’s case for the bill, would not have happened were it not for the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry instigated last December by the Greens and One Nation with the support of the Coalition.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers attacked the Coalition for supporting the inquiry, because it was a breach of the bipartisan deal he thought he had with Angus Taylor.

It was, and it only happened because the calls and emails of objections from thousands of citizens forced the Coalition to shift its position.

Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese clearly know that, because since the hearing last week they have attacked Angus Taylor for “playing politics” and “populism”, which is code for responding to the objections of the people who, after all, aren’t supposed to have a say in these high and mighty matters of banking power, which is the purpose of the recommendation to scrap Section 11 in the first place.

In Question Time on 27 February Albanese responded angrily to Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather’s question about the RBA Reforms bill, saying he wasn’t surprised the Greens opposed it, but he was surprised the Coalition was siding with them.

In a shameful display, Albanese outed himself as a rank neoliberal, siding with the anti-democratic RBA plotters against the people; effectively, he said that while other parties can be “irresponsible”, the “mainstream parties” are supposed be on the same side of these fundamental issues affecting real power.

Albanese exposed himself as a traitor to the legacy of the true greats of the Labor Party, John Curtin and Ben Chifley, who fought so hard in the 1930s and 1940s to save Australians from the Money Power.

Don’t declare victory until the final vote, but we’re witnessing what an educated, committed citizenry can achieve.

In this issue:

• Angry Senators reject Westpac’s alternate reality
• Banks boasting $74 billion windfall must provide branches!
• Parliament, senior experts rally to defend public power over RBA
• Defusing the derivatives time bomb: Some proposed solutions
• Former insider exposes USA’s world war on freedom of speech
• The pretence of justice meted out to Assange by the rules-based-order has come undone
• Busting up the neoliberal economic consensus
• Indicting the journalists, raising the citizens: Assange on war lies and cause for optimism
• ALMANAC: ‘All Static and Noise’ anti-China propaganda film about Uyghurs

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