Miranda Devine: Beware jumping on the Westpac bashwagon
No sympathy for Westpac, but if you can break the law 23 million times, maybe there’s something wrong with the law. Damage to the bank is bound to hurt us all, writes Miranda Devine.
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If you can break a law 23 million times, maybe there’s something wrong with the law. If a law is so complex no one can comply with it, then the lawmakers are to blame, but they’re too busy yelling at Westpac for failing to notice 12 customers out of 14 million who may or may not be paedophiles.
It’s hard to muster sympathy for Westpac, but there’s something alarming about a bureaucracy, AUSTRAC, with the power to single-handedly fine one bank $400 trillion — about 250 times the size of the Australian economy.
It is a failure of government which has created an ever-expanding raft of regulations too complicated for any bank to comply with. CommBank was also caught last year.
Paedophiles deserve to be strung up, but is it really the job of banks to police the activities of their customers?
If the government is suddenly so exercised about paedophiles overseas it ought to better fund joint police operations to catch Australian offenders.
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And instead of jumping on the Westpac bashwagon, Peter Dutton should do a better job of protecting us from the Nauru asylum-seeker who allegedly tried to “enter into a relationship with a 13-year-old girl” and is now being medically transferred to Australia.
No sympathy for Westpac. But what about the self-funded retirees who will pay for the $8 billion wiped off Westpac’s shares? What will happen to 35,000 Westpac staff?
Damage to the bank is bound to blow back on the wider economy.
The strength of the big four banks was why Australia weathered the GFC.
Weakening them for a headline is madness.