Citizens Electoral Council of Australia
Not before time, the Australian Labor Party has indicated a royal commission on banking could lead to the break-up of the Big Four banks. ALP frontbencher Matt Thistlethwaite explained to Peter van Onselen on Sky News on 14 March that Labor was looking at separating retail and investment banking, referring to the US law that Bill Clinton repealed in 1999, called the Glass-Steagall Act.
“Is it possible that Labor might look at legislation to break up the banks?” van Onselen asked. “Yeah”, Thistlethwaite said. “There’s a whole host of people who argue that we should break up the retail banking sections, so deposits and mortgages, from the wealth management, the insurance that they’ve added on over recent years, and it’s an approach that was taken in the US, it was watered down unfortunately by Bill Clinton [who in 1999 repealed Glass-Steagall]. It’s something that they’re doing in the UK and there’s calls for it to happen in Australia….”
There sure are calls for it to happen in Australia—mainly from the Citizens Electoral Council, which has campaigned
tirelessly for this policy since the 2008 crash.
Thistlethwaite is expressing a shift in ALP policy and thats a good thing.