The events of last week may well prove to be significant for global banking, including banking in Australia. In the case of the latter, it is the ascendancy of Julie Gillard to the office of prime minister that may facilitate change.The US Congress last week finally adopted a heavily modified and now ironically named Wall St Reform Bill. The second significant event of the week for global banking was the announcement of the introduction of a bank levy in the emergency budget brought down by the new coalition government in Britain.The third event of note was the meeting of global political leaders, through the G20 group, in Toronto over the weekend. That forum opted to adopt the language of increasing the level of, and improving the quality of, bank capital as one of its themes, as was expected.Britain has become the first country to take this controversial action, although it did not go it alone, as the announcement was co-ordinated with similar announcements from France and Germany.It is clear that the major economies of Europe are now determined to impose a tax on their banking systems. Interestingly, France and Germany said they were committed to the full implementation of the ambitious G20 financial sector reform agenda. This came after the G20 finance ministers, meeting in Korea two weeks earlier, killed off the proposal for a global bank levy, under pressure from Canada and Japan, in particular. Australia's Treasurer, Wayne Swan, supported the resistance to this levy. The G20 heads of government over the weekend merely conformed to this stance.The earlier stance of the G20 finance ministers, however, action incensed France and Germany and resulted in President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel sending a joint letter to the head of the G20 Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, pressing for a global bank levy and transactions tax to be placed back on the agenda for G20 leaders meeting this weekend in Toronto.But it is also clear that this European push is not about reform of the banking sector or even recovering the costs associated with bailing out banks in recent years or in the future, it is about raising revenue to address ballooning budget deficits. The UK Treasury has said that the cost of the recent UK bank bail-outs has now fallen to just £2 billion, yet the new bank levy, which will come into affect from the start of 2011, will raise more than £1 billion in the first year and £2.5 billion every year thereafter. Moreover, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that he would inform the G20 leaders he is considering a separate tax on bank profits and bonuses, provided the competitiveness of the City of London as a global banking sector is not adversely impacted.And in a final illustration of why the push for bank levies and transaction taxes has nothing to do with banking sector reform, there was also the suggestion last week that such moves in Europe, at least, may be linked to less stringent capital adequacy