PRESS RELEASE: Introducing Prof Andy Schmulow, ACP Senate candidate for NSW, champion for everyday Aussies against our rigged financial system

The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) is excited to announce Associate Professor Andy Schmulow will run as the party’s lead Senate candidate for New South Wales, in the imminent federal election.

The ACP’s primary focus as a party is to break the power of the big banks over Australia’s political system. A system they’ve rigged in their favour, to the detriment of everyday Australians.

Nobody is better qualified and equipped to take on this rigged system in the Senate, than Andy Schmulow.

Highly qualified, and specialising in financial regulation, his advice has been sought by governments all around the world. He has demonstrated time and time again his fearlessness, and his willingness to speak truth to power. He doesn’t give a damn who he offends or upsets. The Australian Financial Review described him as “spectacularly impolite”. Despite his forthrightness, his arguments are compelling, and his delivery flawless. As a result, his recommendations have been adopted around the world, and by numerous Australian Commissions of Inquiry.

Andy built his reputation as a ferocious critic of the banks and the regulators in the lead-up to the 2018 banking royal commission. Since then, he has continued to apply his intellect like a blowtorch, as both major parties have allowed the banks to ignore the royal commission’s recommendations.

In more recent years, he has impacted major Senate inquiries into:
• the investigation and enforcement methods of corporate regulator ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission);
• global accounting giant PwC and the other big accounting firms’ corrupt influence over the Australian Taxation Office and government departments;
• the market abuses of the Coles-Woolworths retail duopoly; and
• bank closures in regional Australia.

Andy’s unrelenting criticisms in his submissions and testimony were adopted, often entirely, in the Senate’s final recommendations in all of those inquiries.

Welcoming Andy Schmulow’s candidacy for the ACP, the party’s Research Director and fellow Senate candidate (for Victoria) Robert Barwick said the Senate inquiries vividly demonstrate why Australia needs an attack dog like Andy in the Senate.

“Senate inquiries conduct deep dives into crucial issues, and the impact Andy Schmulow has had on shaping the outcomes of these inquiries proves the devastating effectiveness of his work”, Barwick said.

“Most of the time, however, the final reports and recommendations are ignored by both major parties, because they are so subservient to the banks and other vested interests.

“The individual Senators who participate in these inquiries often come to accept the need for reform, and know how important the recommendations are, but they are not capable of persuading their own colleagues.

“They mean well, but just aren’t up to it.

“By contrast, Andy Schmulow is a powerhouse, armed not just with facts but a formidable ability to use them to hold corporations to account. He eats bank lawyers and political shills for breakfast.

“Australia desperately needs Andy Schmulow in the Senate, so he can prosecute and expose the rigged system from the inside, and drive reform.”

The ACP’s policy platform includes key measures to reform the financial system, such as:
• a government-owned post office People’s Bank to break the oligopoly of the Big Four banks;
• abolish and replace ASIC;
• achieve justice and compensation for Australia’s hundreds of thousands of financial-industry victims;
• public investment in affordable housing, and a foreclosures moratorium to protect homeowners from eviction by banks; and more.

The people of NSW and Australia can be completely confident that Andy Schmulow will drive these needed changes in the Senate. He will be the champion of the people in Parliament, and strike terror into the hearts of the big four banks.