Banks not fussed by watchdog’s feed cost

2016-04-21 Medcraft ASIC uniforms Morrison Turnbull 9mgFIN.jpg Peter Nicholson cartoon

Little wonder Australian Bankers Association boss Steve Munchenberg was relaxed and comfortable about his big four members being slugged to pay the cost of ASIC regulating the ethically challenged sector.

While son-of-a-cop Treasurer Scott Morrison declared yesterday that he would be “furious” if banks passed on the cost of regulation to consumers, the ABA doesn’t see it that way.

Just last year, in its submission to an ASIC capability review that floated the idea the banks might have to pay for the watchdog, Munchenberg said that “increases in the cost base of the industry will inevitably lead to increases in costs for consumers”. Unless, that is, they can be absorbed or offset through Malcolm Turnbull-style “innovation”.

ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft was long on delight yesterday as he basked in ScoMo’s generous return of some $120 million ripped out of the regulator in Tony Abbott’s 2014 budget and an 18-month extension to the chair’s term.

The happy chappy used the word “delighted” at least seven times as he faced finance hacks yesterday, but dodged questions on whether Australia was still a paradise for white-collar crime, as he said in 2014 to the horror of then-treasurer Joe Hockey.

Drinks on Greg

There’s no pay rise for the extension (don’t call it a reappointment) of former banker Medcraft’s contract, with the chairman having to survive on $731,000 a year as “tough cop on the beat” (guns and uniforms a la Italy’s Guardia di Finanza can’t be far off).

Out of his miserable sinecure Medcraft will have to buy Bill Shorten a schooner of draught downstairs at his local Woollahra Hotel, as thanks for the Opposition Leader’s good work pushing ScoMo into doing something — anything — about those dastardly banks.

Medcraft, 60 in July, likes life in Turnbull’s Wentworth, last year paying $4.8m with partner Kay Binnie for a renovated Paddo terrace with harbour views. The almost 30-year SocGen veteran was a Woollahra councillor and mayor in the 90s and then again from 2008, when he ran on the Residents First Woollahra ticket, perhaps revealing why he’s not that popular with ScoMo and Co.

All those hats must be the reason there appears to be some discrepancy in Medcraft’s personal records on his own (still for sale) ASIC database. Medcraft variously lists Windsor Street and Stafford Street addresses, with the paperwork probably lost in the mail.

Kennett’s ticking off

Walkley winner Tara Brown and her 60 Minutes crew were yesterday working towards a deal to get them home from their Lebanon’s jails, but back home the sordid child snatch saga has reignited old passions.

Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett seized on the drama to lay into his old Liberal Party enemy Peter Costello, demanding the Nine chairman and former treasurer hold those responsible for approving the ill-fated mission to account.

Kennett, who is still a Costello rival thanks to his seat on the board of Kerry Stokes’ Seven, blasted the “illegality” and “stupidity” of Nine management, saying that “every aspect of good governance has and is being ignored and denied by those in positions of authority”.

None of this is good for 60 Minutes, which lacks a major sponsor. Long-time partner Toyota was replaced by Jeep a couple of years ago, but that deal is also dead. The pitch for new sales boss Michael Stephenson hasn’t got any easier.

Pixie publicity

The adage that any publicity is good publicity isn’t true for Sydney publicist Roxy Jacenko, whose hubby is accused insider trader Oliver Curtis.

We won’t forget the brouhaha Jacenko cooked up in February when she fingered the fashionable folk from Romance Was Born over doctored images of her social media starlet daughter Pixie Curtis. Jacenko took the matter straight to cops.

Amid controversy about the sexualisation of littlies and Jacenko exploiting her daughter for financial gain, the matter went nowhere with the cops, but clearly things are still raw in the Jacenko-Curtis household.

This week, with mum in LA, a Pixie pic was posted of the four-year-old in her knickers, stirring up a hornets nest of criticism.

Within 24 hours it was gone. Dad Oliver perhaps wishes his own controversy would disappear as easily. Final procedural matters in his insider trading case are to be settled by the NSW Supreme Court in the next fortnight, with Curtis’s trial to begin in less than three weeks.

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