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Bank Guarantee Raises Serious Questions

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In a recent Senate hearing, I questioned the government on its decision to include a standing appropriation—an open-ended budget allocation—in its Pacific Banking Guarantee legislation. This approach bypasses the annual appropriation process, removing Senate oversight and public transparency.

The Pacific Banking Guarantee is a scheme whereby the Federal Government guarantees the operation of banks across the Pacific. If these banks encounter financial difficulties, the Federal Government will bail them out. Why this is the business of the Australian Government escapes me. Why banks such as the Commonwealth and ANZ require a Federal Government guarantee, despite earning profits exceeding $15 billion annually, is a question they refused to answer. The Guarantee itself is worth no more than $2 billion—even in the unlikely event of a total loss. This Guarantee has been provided to give the Big Four banks a competitive advantage over other banks and financial institutions. With this Guarantee, they can borrow money at lower rates, thereby increasing their profits and creating an “I owe you one” sense of obligation to the Federal Government. I assume Minister Bowen intends to leverage this influence to “encourage” investment in wind and solar energy, despite the questionable economic viability of such ventures.

This is how government operates: influence-trading using taxpayers’ money.

Standing allocations cannot be questioned, and the only way to halt this flow of money to our major banks is through legislation that overturns the allocation. Given that the Greens have supported big banking in this country throughout the Albanese Government’s term – alongside the Government itself – any effort to restore accountability to the Pacific (big) Banking Guarantee is going to fail.

This reflects the contempt of the Albanese Government. The ALP is proving to be even bigger corporate lapdogs than the Liberals were.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: The Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills requested a justification for why this bill includes a standing appropriation rather than being included in the annual appropriation bill, which would give the Senate oversight. Please explain why a standing appropriation is required. 

Senator CHISHOLM: Thanks, Senator Roberts, for the question. A special appropriation is more suitable for meeting possible liabilities than annual appropriations. While the likelihood the Commonwealth will need to make a payment is very low, we may be urgently required at any time to meet liabilities arising under a guarantee, which may fall outside the usual budget cycle. This means the annual appropriation process may not be available within the timeframe any liability falls due.  

Without a special appropriation, it is possible parliament will be recalled to pass an urgent appropriation or the Commonwealth can risk defaulting on its liabilities. The special appropriation is not proposed to have a direct dollar limit, as this provides the Commonwealth with flexibility to ensure it achieves a significant national interest objective, securing an Australian banking presence in the Pacific over the long term.  

The Commonwealth would not provide an unlimited guarantee, however there may be circumstances where the maximum amount guaranteed under the appropriation could change. This includes if the Commonwealth entered into a new agreement with another Australian bank and the legislation limits on the types of guarantees the government can provide to guarantees—only from an ADI banking business in the Pacific region. Specifically, the legislation limits the guarantee to only the ADI’s Pacific operations. 

Senator ROBERTS: So it’s an open-ended budget allocation. The guarantees being provided by this government are commercial-in-confidence. This means the Senate will not have oversight on what the government is agreeing to. Is that correct? 

Senator CHISHOLM: In terms of reporting obligations, any Pacific banking guarantee, including the ANZ agreement, will contain mechanisms to ensure a bank’s compliance with its obligations. This includes regular reporting on the total amount of guaranteed liabilities and the compliance with bank commitments as well. 

Senator ROBERTS: The duration of the ANZ guarantee is 10 years, meaning this government is binding future governments. Can the federal government withdraw from a guarantee at any time in those 10 years? If so, is there any sunset clause or time limit to the guarantees? 

Senator CHISHOLM: It’s a commercial agreement that’s been entered into with the Commonwealth. There is no sunsetting clause. 

Senator ROBERTS: I am told the World Bank is also working on a plan to assist correspondent banking intermediaries in the Pacific. Why didn’t you join that international effort, and will you use what they come up with as a way of sunsetting this arrangement? 

Senator CHISHOLM: Any Pacific banking guarantee is expected to complement the World Bank’s Pacific Strengthening Correspondent Banking Relationships Project, the CBR project. The government strongly supports the World Bank’s work on this in terms of the work they are doing in the Pacific. 

Senator ROBERTS: If you have strong confidence in the World Bank, why not let the World Bank do it? 

Senator CHISHOLM: Phase 1 of the World Bank project will establish a correspondent banking relationship provider of last resorts, which countries can call upon should they lose their financial correspondent banking relationship in a particular currency. It is intended to be a fallback for when there is no other commercially viable option. 

Senator ROBERTS: This bill does not specify what is being guaranteed, so let me ask. Does the guarantee extend to the Australian government guaranteeing loans by Australian banks to the governments of Pacific nations? 

Senator AYRES: Senator Roberts, we’ve just had a small changeover. I’m just trying to ensure that I can give you accurate information. The Commonwealth provides a limited guarantee to ANZ, under this legislation, in connection with banking operations in nine markets across the Pacific and Timor-Leste.  

Those markets are Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga and Vanuatu. The guarantee only covers certain eligible liabilities, and it is only triggered if certain trigger events occur and result in a loss to ANZ. The Commonwealth has only provided the guarantee for certain eligible liabilities in order to minimise the risks and potential costs of any Pacific banking guarantee to the Commonwealth and to mitigate any potential competition or market distortion risks in Pacific financial markets and the Pacific banking sector.  

To preserve the non-distortionary mechanisms in the guarantee, the government will not be disclosing the specific terms of the guarantee, including the types of exposures that are covered. If it assists Senator Roberts, the government was, of course, provided with extensive commercial advice on the guarantee, including around the risks, and commercial risk assessments found the likelihood of a default to be very low. 

Senator ROBERTS: I appreciate your statement that you’d like to give me accurate information, but you didn’t answer the question. I take it that you can’t answer the question of whether or not the Australian government is guaranteeing loans by Australian banks to the governments of Pacific nations. 

Senator AYRES: I’ll try and answer a little bit more directly, if it assists. The reason that I answer it in the way that I do, Senator Roberts, is that the advice that is provided and the terms of the guarantee are, of course, commercial in confidence, for policy reasons, in particular so that they don’t distort the banking and financial services markets in the Pacific. I’ll get the team behind me to correct me if I answer this incorrectly.  

The question about the support that the Australian government provides to Pacific island countries is quite different to this set of arrangements, which is about ensuring that banking services are provided and that there is trade, the free movements of goods, investment and all of the things that go with having banking services provided with the facilitation and support of the Australian government. I hope that assists; I’m not sure that it will. If you’ve got further questions, I’ll endeavour to answer them. 

Senator ROBERTS: It doesn’t answer the question, but I’ll come back to it later. Minister, Australian banks like the ANZ raise money to lend in the market, issuing bonds and debt securities. If the intended use of that capital is to issue government-guaranteed loans to Pacific nations, which this bill would allow, does that not give banks like the ANZ a competitive advantage in the capital market? And is any oversight intended of the capital raising of Australian banks to make sure they are honest in their representations to the capital market? 

Senator AYRES: Any banking guarantee in the Pacific, including this agreement, will contain mechanisms to ensure a bank’s compliance with its obligations, which include regular reporting on the total amount of guaranteed liabilities, and to ensure compliance with bank commitments. There are measures undertaken in order to deal with that concern, which is at present, I would argue, theoretical.  

I hope that the financial markets in this area lift to a point that is consistent with the kind of development, growth, investment and trade that the Australian government is working with our Pacific partners to facilitate. That is in their interest and in our interest for that to occur. The kinds of measures that you’re talking about—I’ll put that backwards—do not have a distortionary effect on capital markets or on financial markets.  

There is extensive work that sits behind this that has been directed towards achieving that outcome. ANZ has made a number of commitments to its Pacific operations in the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in exchange for this guarantee that includes maintaining face-to-face banking services and enhancing the ANZ Bank’s services, including digital services. That is important for people and businesses and economic growth and investment in each of those states.  

It supports ongoing access to correspondent banking services in the Pacific and international money transfers, including the Australian dollar but also the New Zealand dollar and the US dollar. It will also maintain fee-free remittances for ANZ customers. That is important for facilitating more trade and more transactions. It will involve investing an additional $50 million to enhance the ANZ’s digital banking offering in the Pacific, excluding in Papua New Guinea, again, mobilised by some of the issues about making sure that the effect here is to support providing banking services where they are at risk.  

The uplift that is engaged there will impact the ANZ’s retail banking operations everywhere, except for Papua New Guinea, where ANZ today currently only offers institutional banking services that play an important role for the mining sector and other parts of the Papua New Guinea economy. Alongside this, there are efforts to continue to support and promote financial inclusion and literacy, and ANZ will continue to support Pacific countries in terms of their infrastructure financing, in line with the bank’s credit risk policies.  

That is the nature of the impact of the guarantee, in terms of capital markets. It should not be conflated, of course, with the efforts that the Australian government engages in through EFA and various efforts to support infrastructure development and economic development more broadly in the Pacific. This is about supporting the banking infrastructure—maybe I shouldn’t say ‘infrastructure’, because it’s confusing—the banking retail network and digital services that sit alongside that throughout the Pacific states.  

Senator ROBERTS: I noticed that, in starting that answer, you used the words, ‘I hope that the financial markets lift’—I hope—to the trade, yet, in Australia, we had severe breaches of the law by senior banking and financial institution officials and no-one went to jail—no-one! You also said that you’d like to maintain face-to-face banking services in the Pacific islands, yet we can’t get that here in Australia. Minister, is this bill just putting more money in the pockets of the big four banks by lowering their borrowing costs relative to other banks? 

Senator AYRES: The short answer to that question, Senator Roberts, is no. It does not achieve that objective in any practical way. It’s not one of the principles that’s engaged here. Australia does have a very well-regulated banking sector, and that is a national asset for Australia. That is important for our capacity to deliver investment and growth and financial transactions and security for borrowers and lenders and projects.  

In times of financial stress, our well-regulated banking sector is a fundamental part of Australia’s economic resilience in what is a pretty challenging world that we live in. That is not related to what is being provided for here. There will always be, as you’ve alluded to, bad actors, bad things happening, malfeasance, errors, omissions or whatever in any system. I have no argument with that. That is what the regulatory sector is designed to deal with. This situation is about extending banking services that might not otherwise be extended to a part of the world that needs banking services, and it is in Australia’s interest for those to be provided.  

This ensures that, through arrangements supported by this legislation and also by the commercial and non-distortionary measures, it’s provided in a way in which there is no disadvantage to the Australian banking sector—and, when I say ‘banking sector’, what I mean is the kind of services that customers and businesses would need and expect from the Australian banking sector. Quite the contrary to the final suggestion in your question, this is not a matter of the government paying an amount to the ANZ; in fact, it’s quite the reverse.  

The ANZ pays an annual fee with respect to the guarantee, and the Department of Finance and the Commonwealth’s commercial advisor have provided advice on the annual fee. That fee amount, for some of the reasons that you’ve alluded to in some of your previous questions and in order to ensure that it doesn’t have a distortionary effect, is commercial in confidence and cannot be disclosed publicly. The guarantee isn’t a subsidy. It’s not a bailout. The government will not be providing any direct funding to Australian banks for their Pacific operations. 

Senator ROBERTS: That sounds like a protection fee. Let’s get this straight. Banks have no risk—they have a guarantee if they have any losses—so banks cannot lose, so that sounds like a protection fee. Minister, who drafted your bill for you? The banks? 

Senator AYRES: Certainly not. That is certainly not the case. This bill is drafted, this arrangement has been struck, in order to support regional communities in Australia and Pacific nations to access banking services. That is in Australia’s national interest. That is fundamentally what is engaged here. For Pacific nations, remaining connected to global finance is one of their highest priorities because it supports their own economic development and their economic resilience. Investment in capability; investment in new businesses; microfinance for small businesses; and making sure that project finance can be accessed for the kinds of mining, development, manufacturing and other projects that deliver good jobs, stable investment, national economic growth, regional interdependence and economic resilience in the region—all of that is in Australia’s national interest.  

Those are the questions that are being engaged here. In terms of regional Australia, this government has secured commitments from the banks that previous governments have failed to secure—a moratorium on regional bank closures from the four major banks, as well as an agreement to increase their commitment to, and their investment in, Bank@Post. I grew up in a little country town. I know how important those services are. And I know you would not be so mischievous as to suggest that there is a relationship between the services provided to regional Australians through their banks and the government’s determination to protect that— 

CHAIR: Minister, I hate to interrupt you, but it’s 1.30. 

Progress reported. 

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Mining Towns Debanked

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Bendigo and Adelaide Bank deny home loans to mining communities

Australian banks are the world’s most profitable, raking in $30bn in profits last year. Much of this was sent overseas to their foreign shareholders, including the usual suspects – Blackrock, First State, and Vanguard. In total, Australian banks paid $27 billion in dividends, of which 26% or around $7 billion was sent to foreign-owned corporations.

Every dollar which goes overseas in dividends is a dollar Australia never sees again, reducing our GDP and making us all poorer.

In this Parliament, One Nation will introduce legislation to create an Australian People’s Bank, with 100% Australian ownership and a Banking Code of Practice which gives customers rights and protections that have been removed from the code being used by Australian banks.

Rural and Regional customers will benefit the most, with many Australian towns no longer having a single bank branch.

Banking greed, dishonesty, and profiteering is something I have been working on since coming into the Senate in 2016.

In 2017 One Nation were successful in creating a Select Committee on Lending to Primary Production Customers. It was obvious to the Senate the banks were screwing over the bush.

Specific issues raised by the Inquiry have been substantially addressed although remediation has not occurred. The big banks are behaving more responsibly in their lending practices as a result of this Inquiry and the Royal Commission that followed.

While lending practices have improved, the banks have turned to other schemes to make their excessive profits.

One area of great concern, one which will be corrected by a People’s Bank, is the closing of bank branches, forcing customers online.

In the last 10 years 2,500 bank branches have closed

I have written about the effect this has before. Today there is a new scam I want to alert you to. I thank the fearless journalist Dale Webster for her work on this topic: link to her article titled “Burning Down the House”.

The culprit this time is the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, Australia’s fifth largest bank.

Bendigo are refusing to give home loans to any town or region which hosts a mine. This includes any mine, no matter the purpose – gold, coal, iron ore, bauxite, rare earths needed for the technology – everything.

Yes, the Bendigo Bank is black-banning towns where the very materials are mined that are used to make the computers that run their bank. What folly.

Anyone applying online for a loan to buy property in a mining area is immediately denied. Home lending in all of Queensland’s mining regions – from coal, oil and gas to opal mining – is knocked back by Bendigo Bank. Yes, even opals.

Distinct areas separated from others by favoured postcodes include Moura (4718) in the Bowen Basin coalfield, home to the Dawson Coal Mine, Mount Isa (4825), site of one of Australia’s largest copper and zinc mining complexes, and the world-renowned opal fields surrounding Quilpie and Longreach.

Coal centres Moranbah, Dysart, Clermont, Emerald, and Blackwater are no home-loan zones, as is the Roma-Miles-Dalby district, the site of Australia’s first oil and gas discoveries. Weipa, built by Rio Tinto to house bauxite mine workers in Far North Queensland, gets an instant knockback as does Tieri, built to house coal workers north of Emerald.

In the course of this investigation, more than 1,000 locations across Australia have been run through Bendigo Bank’s online loan process to verify whether this is truly a mining blacklist or if these postcodes are part of a bigger cohort focusing on general risk.

The Australian Taxation Office’s 10 lowest earning suburbs in every state and territory for 2021-22 were reviewed. The top 100 riskiest suburbs to purchase housing in for 2024 according to Realestate.com were reviewed. Climate Valuation’s top 30 suburbs by ‘number of high-risk properties from all climate change hazards by 2030’ were reviewed. All were approved.

Bendigo Bank will lend for housing in the poorest, riskiest, and most isolated places in Australia rather than a mining area.

This is not about risk, this is about social engineering.

Bendigo and Adelaide bank are publicly-listed Australian companies. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to act in their best interests, not indulge their own prejudices.

As Dale points out, the embarrassing thing is that Bendigo, the city from which Bendigo Bank takes its name and where it has its head office, was built on gold mining.

If people cannot finance their home purchases these towns will die. This is a deliberate and possibly criminal attempt by the Bendigo Bank to destroy mining in Australia by destroying the towns that support the mines.

Once an area loses housing credits and mortgages the bank in that area can be closed, using the lie that there is no longer the demand for the branch. The truth is the banks are creating the lack of demand by withdrawing key banking services and engineering the closure.

Do you hear a peep out of the leadership of the Nationals or the Liberals about this? No of course not.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and Nationals Leader David Littleproud take their orders form the same predatory merchant banks that Bendigo Bank does. The Liberals, in particular, have overseen this destruction of retail banking in Australia since the time of Prime Minister Howard.

Only One Nation will fix this profiteering and control agenda by creating a People’s Bank.

Mining towns debanked by Senator Malcolm Roberts

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank deny home loans to mining communities

Read on Substack
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In support of a People’s Bank in Australia

The Big 4 banks have been ripping Australians off for decades. Taking all the profits, they’re leaving regional communities in the dust, closing branches and strangling small business capital. We need a people’s bank in Australia.

I had the pleasure of speaking in support of people’s bank last week in Canberra

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Government cosying up to their bank mates – APRA

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The government is set to try and ram through destructive changes to responsible lending rules. This axing will mean banks can go back to the bad days of over-lending to people who will never pay their loans back. We cannot go back to the bad days of equity theft where banks lent to people who couldn’t afford it just so the bank could later sell their house for a profit.

The government’s proposed axing includes giving APRA more bank-policing responsibility. I’m sorry to say but APRA has been weak and ineffective when it comes to policing the banks. They’ve managed to hand out just a $1.5 million dollar fine compared to ASIC and AUSTRAC’s impressive $2.2 billion in banking fines.

I won’t allow this government to use the cover of the pandemic to ram through cushy rule changes for their banking mates.

Transcript

Thank you very much Senator small. Senator Roberts, please take us home

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you Chair and thank you for appearing here

As promptly as possible.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay. If I can reference a December 2020 headline ‘Westpac hit with a second bank regulator penalty.’ Westpac broke key capital ratios and the consequence APRA levied was to make Westpac keep more money in the bank. In other words, to comply with the law this has the effect of reducing the bank’s ability to lend by reducing their available capital. Is that a fair analysis?

Thanks Senator, for the, for the question. So just to be clear you’re referring to the press release of March 21. Did I hear that correctly?

[Malcolm Roberts] No.

Which one?

[Malcolm Roberts] The headline of December 1st 2020 in Reuters.

December 1st, 2020.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yep.

So at that time, Senator, there were a range of AML issues for Westpac,

[Malcolm Roberts] AML?

Anti money laundering issues. APRA announced at that time, just before Christmas that it was taking action on three issues, there was an additional capital overlay, which I think is the point you’re making, of an additional 500 million on top of the 500 million they’d already applied, a BEAR investigation and some supervisory work. And I’m happy to talk about that. In terms of the capital impost, Westpac is a bank as per other majors who are very well capitalised. They’re running CT1 in the twelves at the moment and they have plenty of capital to lend for worthwhile projects and housing.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay, thank you. Another headline, April 2021, APRA takes action against Macquarie Bank over multiple breaches of prudential and reporting standards. The penalty there was to keep more money in the bank, that also has the result of reducing the bank’s liability- ability to lend money. Correct?

Senator that’s another example where a bank breached a number of reporting issues on capital and liquidity and also on stable funding. We took action on the bank and part of that action was the capital impost. And I think the same answer applies that you have a bank with considerable capital and considerable ability to lend commercially. And in fact, in the case of Macquarie, they have been lending very significantly into housing.

[Malcolm Roberts] A third example, APRA takes, this is the headline from October 20th. APRA takes action against Bendigo and Adelaide Bank for breaching prudential standard on liquidity, their penalty, well their consequence, was not a penalty. Their consequence was to keep more money in the bank, that also reduces their ability to lend.

Senator, I think all three examples that you give go to breaches of standards that APRA has and as we’ve explained to the Committee previously we have an enforcement approach. The adoption and compliance with prudential standards is critically important to safety and system, safety for depositors in particular. And so we need to and have taken appropriate action, enforcement action on each one of those cases. And so that’s what we’ve done.

Can I just clarify one thing, Senator? So you keep referring about our actions reduce the capacity to lend and that’s not, not quite right, what we do when we’re adding more capital to the bank effectively we’re changing the mix in which it uses either its shareholders money or depositors’ money to fund loans. And the actions we take mean effectively that a bank has to use more shareholders’ money and less depositors’ money to fund a loan, but it doesn’t actually stop the bank from or reduce the bank’s ability to lend. It just says, use more of your shareholders money, put- get your shareholders to put more on the table and use less depositors’ money.

[Malcolm Roberts] Doesn’t it make the bank, reduces the bank’s ability to lend in that it makes

Only if they don’t have enough capital to meet their regulatory requirements and then they have to stop. But as John has said, these banks are running well above their minimum regulatory requirements. So the issue is really, it changes their, because capital is more expensive than funding from depositors it makes their funding costs slightly higher.

[Malcolm Roberts] So the headline in the Reuters that, well, the first paragraph, the Australian bank regulator, APRA, said on Tuesday it was forcing Westpac Banking Corp to raise its cash reserves after it fell short of prudential standards its second enforcement action in a year against the country’s number three lender.

So the effect of what we did was to increase the minimum amount of shareholders’ money that we required Westpac to have.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay.

But they use that money still to lend.

[Malcolm Roberts] I ask because in a meeting of the Responsible Lending legislation with my staff, between my staff and Treasury, Treasury indicated that a substantial reason behind moving responsible lending regulation from ASIC to APRA was because ASIC was imposing restrictions on the bank’s ability to lend. But you’ll argue with this, then that is exactly what we see that APRA doing, is it not, because it’s altering the liquidity?

Well, I think we’ve already answered that question Senator.

[Malcolm Roberts] So since the Royal Commission, has APRA ever launched an action against an ADI or bank that resulted in a fine, a real penalty, not just complying with the law?

Yes we have Senator. And an example of that would be Westpac again, for a breach of reporting standards, a small fine but it was the maximum fund that could be levied under the FSCODA Act.

[Malcolm Roberts] What was the fine?

It was from memory, 1.5 million.

[Malcolm Roberts] Isn’t it amazing how 1.5 million is a small fine these days but anyway

Well we’re talking about a major

[Malcolm Roberts] It is all relative Does the National Consumer Credit Protection Amendment Supporting Economic Recovery Bill 2020 allow APRA to fine a bank that engages in systemic breaches of the Responsible Lending Guidelines.

So no, no Senator.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you. What action is open to APRA to regulate low doc home loans which are provided for in that legislation.

Well that, that is not something within our responsibility Senator.

[Malcolm Roberts] Well, we could find none

Senator Roberts we will need to wind up soon.

[Malcolm Roberts] Yep, I’m almost done. What about all the people who lose their homes their savings, their marriages, their mental health. Is there no consideration for the human cost of bad bank behaviour in this legislation?

Senator, is that a question?

[Malcolm Roberts] Yes.

If it is it’s not a piece of legislation that APRA has responsibility for Senator

[Malcolm Roberts] But you will have, or for Responsible Lending.

No, that’s not correct Senator.

[Malcolm Roberts] I thought you were getting, going to have responsibility for Responsible Lending.

What we have, as explained earlier, is we have a standard, Prudential Standard, APS220 there are some very minor changes to that and APRA’s current stance in relation to how it assesses credit will be pretty much the way it has been for many years. So no change

[Malcolm Roberts] Under the new legislation,

Well correct Senator.

[Malcolm Roberts] Thank you. APRA runs the Bank Executive Accountability Regime – BEAR scheme which fines bank executives for bad banking behaviour. You have taken action against the banks for bad behaviour, ASIC and AUSTRAC have fined, have caused fines on the banks of over $2 billion in the last three years. How many of the executives in charge of the banks have been personally fined through BEAR?

I was going to say the BEAR doesn’t give us capacity to impose fines on individuals.

[Malcolm Roberts] None at all?

That’s not part of the legislative framework.

[Malcolm Roberts] Okay. Well last question Chair. Westpac are moving night safe wallets and advising their business customers to not accept cash. Isn’t that rule number one for a bank, accept the Queen’s currency. On what basis are APRA allowing the banks to make such fundamental and illegal decisions without reference to APRA.

Senator, APRA does not have particular standards in place in terms of what commercial activities banks undertake and services that they provide. So, so they are commercial issues for the banks. Thank you Chair. Thank you. Thank you.

Just on your last point though I do think it is a little bit of an issue if banks do, and I’m not saying that Senator Roberts is necessarily correct, but banks refuse to accept legal tender, but I will leave that part there. Thank you very much for your time.

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