‘Bill Shorten’s Royal Commission proposal: Labor and the banks go way, way back‘, Pearls and Irritations, 9 April 2016 and updated
Update of some earlier material on the Honest History site about the history of Labor’s relations with the banking system, going back to the Fisher Government and the Commonwealth Bank in 1911, then Ben Chifley on the first banking Royal Commission in 1935-37, then Chifley and the attempt to nationalise the trading banks in 1947-49. Since then Australia has developed a banking system, even without nationalisation, that is the most concentrated in the world.
The article suggests there are connections between this concentrated power and the poor customer service that Shorten’s proposal is designed to address. Cartels are not good for consumers but they work pretty well for bank shareholders. The article includes some apposite comments from Evan Jones.
The Pearls and Irritations blog where the article appears is wrangled by John Menadue, one of Honest History’s distinguished supporters. Earlier material on banking links from here. Kevin Davis and Andrew Schmulow in The Conversation.
