“Successive governments’ greater fear is not the suffering of customers and corruption in the banks, it is of a gigantic collapse.”
Michael West: While banks at the royal commission admit to misleading conduct and corruption – permitted by a compliant regulator – they are protected by government as too big to fail.
This week, the third of the royal commission’s sitting, was all about fees. Testimony emerged of fraud, dishonesty, greed and incompetence by hundreds of bank-aligned financial planners.
“As a lawyer in the regulatory policy branch, I routinely saw large financial institutions regularly make dishonest representations to ASIC,” ex-employee James Wheeldon tells Michael West. “Their lawyers, too. And I complained and they did nothing.”
The royal commission will trip from one scandal to the next. Like Donald Trump, people will get used to it. Stories of corruption and malpractice will flow like a raging torrent. The number of ruined lives will mount, the stories of entire savings lost on bad or rapacious advice. The essential question is, what will come out of it?
Plus: Paul Bongiorno on Malcolm Turnbull and the war room, Karen Middleton on Scott Morrison’s derailed budget message, and Mike Seccombe on homelessness.
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The Saturday Paper
