Very Organised Crime

Money laundering, ripping off people, stealing their money, thumbing their nose at the law it seems like a page from an organised crime serial you’d see on television. Unfortunately it isn’t fiction, it’s real. No, it’s not the local drug dealer down the street or even the rapidly disappearing SP bookie. It’s not the kid with a gun or knife robbing the local milk bar or an outlaw motorcycle gang trying to make a name for themselves. It’s not corrupt politicians, standover merchants or organised crime figures.

The stand in awe at the banks and Australia’s financial institutions as they fleece their customers brushing aside the law as confetti at a wedding party, while they make hay any way they can on behalf of their stakeholders. We seem to forget this country’s banks and financial institutions have only one responsibility. They need to make every increasing profits for their major shareholders irrespective of the human, social, environmental and national costs. They don’t have a responsibility to the Australian people or the Australian government, their only responsibility is to themselves.

So how do we find ourselves in such a sorry state? The deregulation, privatisation, corporatisation and globalisation revolution that was unleashed 40 years ago has put all the aces in their hands. Governments seem unwilling or unable to put the genie back in the bottle. Irrespective of the latest scandal – it’s business as usual. Nothing changes. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and never the twain shall meet.

It’s high time a Royal Commission was held into the banking industry and Australia’s financial services. Enough is enough, a light needs to be shone on their activities. They need to be called before a Royal Commission, their dirty laundry needs to be taken out of the plastic bags it is packed into and put before the Australian people. How long must people be ripped off, lied to and cheated before the Federal government is forced to act? We must act to protect the integrity of this country. They must be regulated, a new people’s bank whose ownership is incorporated in the Australian constitution needs to be legislated for by the Federal government. The only way to bring these ferals into line is to introduce some real competition in Australia's banking industry. A Royal Commission is a good way of laying the foundation for a new people’s bank which is owned by the Australian people, not the government of the day. Remember how long it took to get a Royal Commission into Institutionalised child abuse in Australia? The ramifications of the Royal Commission’s findings continue to have a significant impact on those involved. A Royal Commission into the banking and financial sector would have the same effect. Change would be forced on institutions that continue to thumb their nose at the law and all Australians.