Apparently he did so in a telephone hook up with the Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg yesterday. The anger was dutifully passed on to bank CEOs by Jordan later that day.
When the $130b JobKeeper cash splash was announced last month, the Treasurer and PM said that the government would shell out the money come May, but in the meantime they expected banks to provide credit because the looming funds were guaranteed by government.
A government which has a AAA credit rating.
At one level that is fair enough, but why should banks be ready to move at a moment’s notice when the government wasn’t? Given that when the Coalition announced the scheme it gave itself a full month and a half to get its house in order before the cash flowed, why would banks necessarily be better placed to do so immediately — without warning?
It seems like double standards to me. And the announcement wasn’t even pre-empted by a courtesy call to the banks, and banks weren’t even eligible for the payments, even if they qualified for the funds because of economy hardship.
I am certainly not in the business of defending the big banks – having proven my willingness to hold them sharply to account when Westpac’s disgraceful conduct over AUSTRAC came to light, for example. But the government’s expectations regarding the banks doesn’t match up to its own conduct on this occasion.
In short, it’s hypocrisy to attack banks for not moving quickly when neither did the government.
And let’s not forget this is the same government which presided over a Centrelink system that crashed on day one when people tried to access the website, and has presided over a great many problems with the administration of the JobKeeper package already. We’ve seen examples starting to emerge highlighting design flaws in the way the scheme was being put together.
Rather than focusing on fixing on those issues, the Coalition is already getting ahead of itself, discussing plans to radically revamp the economy in the wake of the crisis. Ironically, not driven by ideas, but an idea that having big ideas is a good idea right now.
I’m sure the millions of Australians impacted by the consequences of the virus and the government’s response to it right now would rather their attention was firmly fixed on getting processes and payments properly in place now. Not the lofty goal of an ideologically driven shift to lower corporate and company taxes in the years ahead to help pay down the record debt they are accumulating at a record pace.
Peter van Onselen is Political Editor at Network 10 and a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.
More Coverage
Will India’s attacks lead to an all-out escalation?
The world now confronts the situation of two nuclear-armed states, with a long history of mutual hatred and an unresolved territorial dispute, engaged in continuing, conventional military conflict.
Bandt’s loss is Albanese’s (second) sweetest victory of all
Adam Bandt’s utopian vision of turning the next parliament into the most progressive in the nation’s history may still be realised, it just won’t include him.
The Prime Minister has expressed his furious displeasure at banks not moving more quickly to provide bridging finance to businesses to help cover the costs of paying staff the $1500 a fortnight JobKeeper allowance.