Turnbull Government will ignore this call to extend Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry at its own electoral peril

Remember When Australian Prime Minister and former merchant banker Malcolm Bligh Turnbull ruled out a bankig royal commission?

Telling the nation; "I can tell you wehave as a government decided not to have a royal commission, we made thedecision a long time ago, not because we don't believe there is nothing goingon in terms of problems with the banks, it is because we want to take actionright now and we are".

Recall the time and other limits placed on the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry when it was finally established on 14 December 2017? Giving it the power to ignore anything that it wanted to that would otherwise be within its scope. 

Well things did not go entirely to plan for Malcolm and his banker mates.

Because since13 March 2018 the curtain has been drawn back revealing the systemic unethical, deceitful, rapacious, sometimes fraudulent and, in certain instances criminal behaviour, of the financial sector.

National Australia Bank, Westpac, St George, Citibank, ANZ, AMP Insurance and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, along with their financial services spin-offs, had all come under some degree of scrutiny by mid-April with more hearings still sheduled.

So it comes as no surprise that Fairfax Media is now saying what many are thinking.............

The Age, 18 November 2018:

Evidence to the fledgling financial services royal commission confirms the inquiry, long-resisted by the Coalition government and the banks, was justified and suggests it will lead to rigorous reforms. It also suggests the government’s decision to limit the probe to one year should be reviewed.

A damning admission by a top executive of what was once one of the nation’s most trusted institutions, AMP, about his company repeatedly lying to the corporate regulator about condoned client fraud intensifies concerns about one of the most crucial industries.

The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry is only in its third week, but there has been a plethora of testimony to unethical and/or illegal practices including: charging clients for wilfully undelivered services; fraud; manipulating ‘‘independent’’ audit information; selling clients irrelevant insurance and financial products (many of them in-house); failing to declare commissions; refusing to honour insurance contracts; rigging interest rate markets; and failing to make proper checks before granting loans.

The banks long argued the malfeasance was the result of ‘‘a few bad apples’’, a position that became untenable as bountiful evidence, much of it revealed by The Age, implicated the companies’ very culture.....