SA Budget 2017: Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis intensifies sparring over bank tax

TREASURER Tom Koutsantonis has brazenly implored the major banks to escalate their fight against his new tax to the courtroom.

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TREASURER Tom Koutsantonis is goading major banks to take their fight against his $370 million tax hit to the courtroom in a defiant bid to withstand their retaliatory attack.

In a fierce defence of the State Budget impost, on Saturday, dared the big four banks and Macquarie Group to mount a legal challenge, taking a veiled swipe at their executive salaries.

“If a bank wants to take on the people of SA, they’re welcome to,” he said. Mr Koutsantonis’s bold stance came as the Australian Bankers’ Association unleashed a campaign warning of potential financial pain the new tax would inflict on 145,000 SA major bank shareholders.

As Mr Koutsantonis publicly continued his hard sell of the Budget on Saturday, he insisted households would be protected from potential retaliatory bank charges, such as mortgage-rate rises.

And he said he was confident the laws enabling the tax were iron-clad.

“I’m stunned that banks would behave in such a hysterical manner but the truth is they’re protecting their profits,” he said.

Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis continued his hard sell of the Budget on Saturday.

“They don’t want to pay these extra taxes because the super profits they make mean they can charge themselves much larger salaries than the rest of the economy.”

The tax will be charged at a rate of 0.015 per cent a quarter on SA’s relative share of the liabilities held by Australia’s big four banks and Macquarie.

Thirty-four thousand South Australian NAB stakeholders received $170 million in dividends in the 2016 financial year, while BankSA has 38,000 local stakeholders and employs 3800 South Australians.

Mr Koutsantonis rejected ABA chief executive Anna Bligh’s claim he was attacking SA investors.

“I want our banks to be profitable, I want shareholders to get returns. I just want banks to pay their fair share of tax,” he said.

His stance was echoed by Red Proudfoot, co-founder of Hindmarsh brewer Pirate Life, where Mr Koutsantonis was spruiking his $200 million Future Jobs Fund.

“Personally, we see the huge profits come out of the banks so getting a little bit back from them probably isn’t the worst thing in the world,” Mr Proudfoot said.

But just 450m east of Mr Koutsantonis’s electorate office on Henley Beach Rd, workers at Torrensville’s NAB branch said the Government is attacking them and undermining their community work.

CONCERNED: NAB Torrensville staff Theodora Papayianis, Tia Wyatt and Amir Beganovic said they felt the Government was attacking them. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

“When politicians attack the banks, I feel like they’re attacking everyone who works in a bank,” branch manager Amir Beganovic said.

Customer adviser Theodora Papayianis, a grandmother of three who has worked at NAB for more than 30 years, said she felt like the Government didn’t understand how much banks and their workers supported communities.

“Most of us live in the communities where we work and we’re very much part of those communities,” she said.

Fellow customer adviser Tia Wyatt, 20, said: “It’s not a good feeling when you work hard every day and yet the Government seems to think so poorly about what you do”.

Mr Koutsantonis again derided BankSA for placing on hold a project that would have created 150 jobs, saying he had never heard of the project before.

“I’m stunned that BankSA is attacking SA but it’s (parent company) Westpac, not BankSA,” he said.

“Quite frankly, every year they (the big banks) have made more and more profits, bigger and bigger returns for their shareholders yet they’ve cut branches, closed branches, increased fees, charged you more to get your own money out of the bank and now they’re crying poor.”

BankSA chief executive Nick Reade has labelled the Budget an “assault” on its business and said it would have a major impact on Westpac Group’s future investment in the state.