A massive breakthrough for ACP’s postbank fight

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Lead Editorial

4 September 2024
Vol. 26 No. 36

After more than three decades of the Australian Citizens Party (ACP) fighting for a national bank, and four years of relentless campaigning for the post office bank model of a public bank, the first glimmer of success appeared last week when The Australian reported:

“A government-owned bank created out of Australia Post is understood to be back on the agenda, five years after then-Labor leader Bill Shorten indicated that it would be on the party’s to-do list if elected. The understanding is that top executives are assisting the Anthony Albanese-led government with a plan to assess the move and how this could work in what is seen as a response to the closure of numerous bank branches in regional Australia.”

Without jumping the gun, as there’s very little information so far, having the government plant an article in a major newspaper to indicate they’re looking at implementing a policy that goes against 30 years of party ideology is nevertheless a massive breakthrough for the ACP’s campaign.

It’s also a lesson in how to influence government to implement a positive policy against overwhelming opposition from the most powerful vested corporate interests, i.e. the banks.

Remember, this is a timid government that is subservient to vested interests, as seen most recently in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s embarrassing display at the Pacific Islands Forum, where he rammed through an agreement on a security policy wanted by the Americans, and then reported back to the American observer attending the forum, US Under Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, that he’d delivered what the USA wanted, only to get upset that a New Zealand journalist recorded his conversation.

The ACP’s campaign didn’t try to persuade the government with our sound arguments for a bank, because we knew that wouldn’t shift the ideology or their subservience to vested interests.

What we did was work tirelessly to build broad public support for the policy, in the context of political developments that in various ways raised the need for a public bank.

For example:

• banking misconduct exposed at the 2018 royal
• the 2019 cash ban bill that the ACP helped to defeat showed the private banks have a profit-motive to force us into a cashless society, which a public bank wouldn’t have;
• the collapse in supply chains when COVID hit in 2020 proved the dire need for a public bank that could invest in reviving Australia’s industrial capacity;
• the 2020-21 Christine Holgate campaign exposed the true face of the banks and their minions in Parliament who brutally removed her from Australia Post for trying to start a postal bank;
• ASIC’s failings as a regulator, by design of the private baking oligopoly who are a law unto themselves, shows the need for a public bank to set standards;
• the Senate inquiry into regional bank closures, which the ACP helped to establish and lead, showed that a public post bank is the best guarantee of banking services for all communities, both directly and by increasing competition for the private banks;
• the crisis in post office closures proved the urgent need for a postbank that could support the postal network.

It’s true Bill Shorten had looked at starting a postal bank in 2019 following the banking royal commission, almost as a thought bubble, as a result of being flooded by public support for a casual suggestion he’d made in a candidate’s forum that post offices should compete with the banks. But, typical of Labor, after losing the election, they didn’t follow through.

Unlike modern Labor, the ACP has the same tenacity as “old” Labor legend King O’Malley, who fought tirelessly for more than two decades to educate early Labor on the need for a national bank, then get it adopted as party policy, then passed into law in 1911.

We’re not there yet, but we’re on the way.

In this issue:

• Breakthrough—government looking at a post office bank! Here’s how it should work
• ANZ blows up ‘legally binding’ Suncorp deal over Katoomba branch
• Albanese’s union-busting law is a thinly cloaked power-grab
• Biden’s dangerous ‘Nuclear Employment Guidance’
• National Infrastructure Bank presented to DNC
• Platform for escaping West’s financial straitjacket gets stronger
• Our work is not done until the post bank is done right!
• Not Labor! Albanese outdoes neoliberal scriptwriters
   

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