Banks told: ‘Cry me a river’

Treasurer Scott Morrison delivers his budget speech last night. Picture: Kym Smith

The big banks have just been given a very expensive lesson in politics.

This was ScoMo’s revenge. And the Treasurer is unapologetic.

“Cry me a River”, he said yesterday in the budget lock-up when it was suggested they might be unhappy about being slapped with a $6 billion tax.

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“They make $30bn in profits and this is just $1.5bn (every year for four) out of that.”

This one comment revealed that while the banks may have not seen it coming, the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have had this under their hat for some time.

For Morrison it was as much about the budget as it was about the politics. But it had recently become personal.

The recent appointment of former Queensland Labor premier Anna Bligh as the chief executive of the Australian Banking Association, effectively elevating her to the industry’s chief lobbyist and spokesperson, went down like the Hindenburg.

Morrison was in New Zealand when he found out. He had not been given a heads-up about the bewildering move orchestrated by NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn — now perhaps the most unpopular man in banking, considering the consequences.

Morrison took it personally. He had given his blessing to his chief adviser Sasha Grebe to take the job after being headhunted after a ­decision to get out of politics.

The Treasurer called into colleagues in Canberra on the night of Bligh’s announcement. A colleague said he was “apoplectic”.

He then said he would refuse to deal with them. This was the final straw in an inevitable showdown which began when Malcolm Turnbull dropped a bomb on Westpac as the guest speaker at its own function, by telling executives they had to lift their game in the wake of a series of scandals.

Having been hammered day in, day out by Bill Shorten with his calls for a banking royal commission, Turnbull and Morrison were taking the licks for the banks.

The view was that the banks did very little to reciprocate. This was a fatal failure in judgment by the banks. Neither Morrison nor Turnbull are tied to a rigid Liberal philosophy. They are not of Howard or Costello so they were always going to find a political solution that allowed them to divorce the government from the big four.

As Morrison said, he would rather have not had to raise taxes, but when his hand was forced by the Senate, there was no one he would have rather raised them on and, having tied them to the NDIS funding gap, he has embossed it with a moral imperative.