One of the themes of the bank profit reporting season this week has been the way the chief executives of Westpac, National Australia Bank and ANZ have portrayed fairly weak results as better than they appear.

ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott followed the trend on Friday, describing his middling set of full-year numbers – a 2 per cent fall in revenue, a 4 per cent rise in expenses, an 8 per cent fall in cash profit, lower return on equity, higher credit impairment charges and a lower total dividend – as a “strong performance”.