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Lead Editorial
23 October 2024
Vol. 26 No. 43
Last week ANZ was forced to halt its Murwillumbah branch closure; this week the ACP forced attention onto the man who is letting branch closures happen—Treasurer Jim Chalmers. As a news.com.au headline blared on 16 October: “More than half of Australia’s ATMs, one-third of bank branches shut since 2019”, reporting Canstar figures. ANZ’s Katoomba closure is scheduled for today, but demonstrations organised by the ACP outside the branch, at the Suncorp AGM and Chalmers’ office in Brisbane (p. 14) drew coverage from Ten’s The Project which focused on the bank’s breach of Chalmers’ condition for ANZ’s takeover of Suncorp (p. 3).
Why are the banks seemingly exempt from the rules? In one word, neoliberalism.
Likewise for mega corporations. ABC Four Corners exposed on 21 October how Victoria’s government collects fines on behalf of rapacious multinational toll road operator Transurban, for customers evading tolls! Worse, Professor Allan Fels, former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, who conducted a review of Sydney’s toll roads for the NSW government, said senior government bureaucrats suppressed crucial parts of his report—revealing the fat revenues and profits governments guarantee to toll companies. Nor has the government delivered on its promise to disclose the secret contracts that make companies like Transurban veritable money conjurers.
Notorious “Millionaire’s Club” bank and toll road operator, Macquarie, has boasted the racket is a virtual licence to print money. Its Infrastructure Group’s external affairs manager Denis Eager in 2003 bragged to investors that Macquarie can choose its price and jack it up whenever they like: “If [motorists] don’t complain about it being too high, then we won’t have done our job.”
This extortion is only possible due to deregulation.
In an 18 October article, British Lord, accounting professor and activist Prem Sikka provided deadly British examples of the cost of deregulation (from the Grenfell fire tragedy to a blood contamination scandal), designed “to enhance corporate power and profits”. Though it must always permit exceptions and should not inhibit common sense, regulation is a defining element of modern civilisation. As Sikka asks, would you drive a car, ride an aeroplane or eat at a restaurant that had absolutely no regulations or standards imposed upon it? “The absence of public regulation does not mean that the regulatory space remains vacant”, wrote Sikka. “Instead it is filled by private actors who make unfair rules. ... If corporations were ethical and responsible, we wouldn’t need detailed regulations, but they are not.” These are the same arguments made by the great Australians who established our banking regulations in 1945 (Almanac), the last of which are now being stripped.
Leaked emails revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald this week attest to Prime Minister Albanese’s capture by the corporate sector. Despite his government’s promise to reform political donations, Labor’s business forum is making millions selling seats to give corporate donors face time with the PM and his ministers. This laissez-faire free-for-all in which governments have handed power to the private sector has us rushing headlong into a Mad Max world—not futuristic, but a return to prenation state, mediaeval times. Except the modern corporate cowboys have all the power of technology and digitalisation at their disposal for infinitely more efficient ways to loot us. Those capabilities would be massively bolstered by passage of the misinformation and disinformation bill. There will be more: suppression of truth (as seen with Allan Fels’ report) which could damage the banks or corporate behemoths; limits on citizens’ means to publicly question such matters; denial of publicity to those who seek recourse for injustice, if doing so could undermine the banks, create harms or (under existing legislation) jeopardise national security. Democracy will be constricted, weighting political influence over governments in favour of big corporations.
The Citizens Party’s 17 November national conference under the banner “Return Government to the People” will take up these issues. Be there!
In this week's issue:
- Chalmers must revoke ANZ-Suncorp merger until Shayne Elliott saves Katoomba
- Here’s the government post office bank Australia needs
- Free speech, journalism and democracy in a time of genocide
- The BRICS ‘vector of human development’
- Putin previews BRICS summit: Make haste slowly
- Financial expert pushes pilot for new reserve currency
- Election 2024: a referendum on war or peace?
- Imran Khan the forgotten celebrity
- If in doubt, throw it out!
- When Charles as Prince overruled Australian democracy
- ALMANAC: Postwar reforms for the many, or the few?
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