PRESS RELEASE: Only the Australian Citizens Party will fight for the public postal bank solution, because Labor, Liberals and Nationals refuse to stand up to the Big Four banks

Nine months after the bipartisan Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia recommended the government investigate establishing a public bank, the major parties still have not delivered.
And they won’t, because Labor and the Coalition refuse to stand up to the Big Four banks.
Australian Citizens Party (ACP) NSW Senate candidate Dr Andy Schmulow identifies the banks’ strategy of donating multi-millions to both sides as a corrupt control on their policies.
“It’s an arms race”, Dr Schmulow, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong, said. “The politicians know if their party does stand up to the banks, they will lose millions of dollars in bank donations and the other side will have the advantage.”
Dr Schmulow will appear on banking expert Martin North’s live Digital Finance Analytics YouTube show tonight at 8:00PM, to answer questions from the public about how the banks and other corporate cartels have rigged the economy to extract massive profits and drive up the cost of living.
His appearance comes as Pearls and Irritations reports today that Australian banks collectively made a bigger profit last year in absolute terms than the banks in the City of London, despite the UK being a much larger economy. https://johnmenadue.com/its-the-banks-stupid/
Of the major parties, the Nationals are the most shameful for selling out their regional constituents to the banks.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the crisis of regional bank branch closures.
Now led by ex-NAB banker David Littleproud, the Nationals did nothing for the nine years they were in government to stop the banks abandoning hundreds of regional communities.
Towns left without any bank branches wither and die as their residents are forced to drive hundreds of kilometres to the nearest branch.
Only the ACP, with collaborators including former Liberal, now People First Senator Gerard Rennick, fought to stop the rot, and mobilised to force the Senate to establish the regional branch closure inquiry.
No sooner was the inquiry established, in February 2023, all the Nationals who had done nothing when in government jumped on the bandwagon to claim credit.
Former Cabinet ministers Darren Chester and Michael McCormack suddenly gave fiery speeches in Parliament against branch closures in their electorates, and McCormack, the Member for Riverina, posed for photos with the Senators on the inquiry.
However, he didn’t even bother attending the hearing in Junee in his electorate, unlike the ACP’s Riverina candidate, City of Wagga Wagga Councillor Richard Foley, who had already succeeded in getting his Council to support a motion endorsing the postal bank solution.
ACP Senate candidate for Victoria Robert Barwick was the only person to attend every single hearing of the inquiry, from one end of Australia to the other, entirely funded by the ACP, unlike the politicians who were funded by taxpayers.
The ACP’s efforts succeeded in convincing the inquiry to recommend further investigation of a public bank, including the post office bank model, to inject real competition in the banking sector so the banks have to provide a service, or risk losing customers.
But bankers’ boy David Littleproud is now trying to squash the idea, while the Labor government, despite acknowledging the recommendation, is doing nothing.
If Australians want political representatives who’ll take on the banks to break their power and alleviate the cost-of-living crisis, the choice is clear: they need to support candidates like Andy Schmulow, Robert Barwick, and the ACP.

Major election event: Join the YouTube live chat with the ACP’s NSW Senate candidate Dr Andy Schmulow 8pm TONIGHT Sydney time to see why Australia needs this formidable fighter against bank corruption in the Senate. https://www.youtube.com/@WalkTheWorldDFA