Media Release

17 May 2017: KAP Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter has labelled reports that the peak bank lobby group the Australian Banker’s Association (ABA) are squealing about having to sign confidentiality agreements to see the Government’s draft legislation on the Bank Levy as a ‘triumph of hypocrisy’.

A media release issued yesterday by the ABA quotes CEO Anna Bligh (former Qld Premier) as saying “The Government is going to extraordinary lengths to keep this tax hidden from the people who will be most affected by it and from the public.”

Mr Katter has responded with a rage, pointing out the hypocrisy of the ABA after repeated reports to Mr Katter’s office of the banks forcing farmers, small business people and every day Australians to sign confidentiality agreements, protecting the banks. The banks have often done everything in their power to prevent a customer from making their issues public.

“The Government with their ‘free-market American style’ has allowed the financial institutions to do whatever they like. There is no regulatory framework in which they work at all. Not only myself, but numerous other Members of Parliament and community leaders have protested about this.

“Here is the classic situation - when the banks do deals they get the little person, the customer – you, to sign a confidentiality agreement.

“So the supposed contract you have with the bank is actually a document telling you what you will and will not do.

“What they are screaming about here, is exactly what they have been imposing in every single one of their threatened foreclosures in Australia. Every single bank has been doing it.

“Now they have the hide, when their own conditions are applied to themselves - to squeal like stuck pigs.

“Talk about a triumph in hypocrisy!”

On 27 March 2017, Mr Katter introduced the People of Australia’s Commission of Inquiry (Banking and Financial Services) Bill 2017 into the Lower House of Federal Parliament.

Mr Katter’s Bill includes protections for those people who have signed a confidentiality agreement with the bank – so these people can still provide evidence to the Commission, without fear of recourse.