Wickrema Weerasooriawas a Sri Lankan-born lawyer and legal academic (he returned to Sri Lanka from Australia in 2002 and died in 2018). His textbook on banking law in Australia has been seminal. From a first co-authored edition in 1976 to the 6th edition in 2006, Weerasooria’s Banking Law and the Financial System in Australia (Tyree & Weaver, eds.), this text would have ‘educated’ thousands of tertiary law students over several decades.
In May 2020, I published a lengthy dossier titled ‘The Sins of Westpac’, available here and here.Bank Reform Now’s Peter Brandson intervened with Westpac with respect to several cases summarised in my dossier. Brandson received a response from Westpac, via Carolyn McCann (‘Customer and Corporate Relations’) on 11 June, which read:
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is very foolish. Like Treasurers Joe Hockey and Scott Morrison before him. And dangerous. Not content with the idea to further cut taxes (while worshiping the dual deities of Reagan and Thatcher), Frydenberg fronts a new scheme to loosen bank lending rules to speed up economic recovery. Evan Jones
If the banks make concessions to borrowers deprived of income due to the pandemic it will be their first socially considerate act since financial deregulation. By Evan Jones | On 16 July 2020
No short-term bonuses or pay rises for bosses as lender puts aside $1.1bn in damages for customers. NAB has wound up a traumatic 12 months in which it lost its chief executive and chairman by announcing a 10.6% drop in full-year profit and cutting its final dividend.
Prosecutions of senior banking figures are required if the industry is to shake off recent scandals and leave behind the taint of the banking royal commission, investigative journalist Adele Ferguson has warned.
The Parties and the election. The return of the Morrison federal government is a disaster for all bank victims. Labor, with Shadow Minister for Financial Services Clare O’Neil at the helm, readily absorbed the essential story re small business and farmer victims at its regional forums. Evan Jones
“WHEREAS Australia has one of the strongest and most stable banking, superannuation and financial services industries in the world, which performs a critical role in underpinning the Australian economy.
