Stop the RBA’s ‘one tool’, Jim Chalmers!

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Lead Editorial

29 November 2023
Vol. 25 No. 48

The Australian government may never have made such a grave error of judgement. It is pushing to hand the last vestiges of control over banking—hard-fought changes made by the giants of Australian politics, culminating with Curtin and Chifley in the 1940s—to an international club of private bankers, just as public outrage at banks is exploding. And just as real and obvious solutions are rising to the surface. Those solutions stem from the establishment of a public bank, modelled on the plans of Curtin and Chifley and visionaries like King O’Malley, which China has demonstrated in modern times as the only pathway to avoid economic depression.

Amendments to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s governing legislation are set to be moved in parliament this week, but Treasurer Jim Chalmers is being inundated with phone calls and emails demanding he ditch the plan to give up democratic powers over the banking system. The ACP’s crack team is on the job! When an Australian Citizens Party delegation descended on Chalmers’ Brisbane office on 24 November, staff knew what was coming and immediately put up a sign saying, “This office is currently closed for walk-ins.” Another MP’s staffer, met in Canberra on Tuesday, suspected it was the ACP behind the RBA letter campaign. ACP representatives Robert Barwick and Glen Isherwood are there ahead of the historic testimony for a People’s Bank requested by the parliamentary committee investigating regional bank closures, which takes place Friday 1 December at 8:50 AM (p. 3).

Chalmers is digging his grave still deeper. As part of his drive to reinforce the independence of the RBA, the Treasurer has announced that the new Deputy Governor of the RBA will be Bank of England and former IMF boffin Andrew Hauser. The appointment—taken to guide the RBA through its overhaul and bring it into line with international standards, according to the Australian Financial Review—was welcomed by the Opposition.

The latest grenade to blow up in the face of the banks has continued to cause substantial damage. Finance journalist at news.com.au Michelle Bowes, who broke the story of an ANZ whistleblower who revealed that staff deliberately refuse the bank’s customers service to force them to go online or to the ATMs, has written no less than five stories on the subject—because this issue has real traction! On 27 November Channel 9 News did a lengthy story about how “cash is on life support”, with two MPs speaking in defence of cash — Victoria Liberal MP Russell Broadbent and Queensland MP Bob Katter. Meanwhile, Edward River Council in NSW just became the 21st council to pass the ACP resolution calling on the federal government to create a Public Post Office Bank.

Far from just saving bank branches and cash, this campaign exposes the destruction of Australia’s economy at the hands of the bank-dictated neoliberal economic model enforced globally.

Veteran finance journalist Alan Kohler has aptly dubbed our economy a “bankocracy”, based on the engineered increase of real estate values to drive rising bank profits. This housing Ponzi Scheme relies upon sucking ever more hapless investors into a vortex of debt. It is only possible to draw more suckers into the scheme if it keeps growing, promising quick profits for homeowners (or to be more accurate, developers, builders and flippers) and the illusion of wealth.

Furthermore, the bankers claim there is but one lever of monetary control, namely interest rates, to cool or boost our economy by impacting the spending of the heavily indebted masses, which in turn affects the level of inflation and employment. And that tool is wielded not by governments but by the independent Reserve Bank. The burden of this “policy of cruelty”, wrote Kohler, falls not on wealthy borrowers, but those “already living on the edge”. The timing of our parliamentary appearance to inform elected leaders of the real overhaul that is necessary is perfect!

In this issue:

• Editorial: Stop the RBA’s ‘one tool’, Jim Chalmers!
• Australian Citizens Party in Canberra to fight ‘bankocracy’
• Why a People’s Bank is the solution branch closures
• ‘Two Michaels’ lawsuit exposes hypocrisy
• Part 8: Bad China and ‘Free China’
• Hate thy neighbour (Part 2)
• The morally bankrupt “bankocracy” is in trouble!
• McBride’s duty: Fighting Canberra’s political ‘BS’
• ALMANAC: JFK’s address proposing a US-Soviet manned mission to the moon.

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