Bankers' lobby has no plans for ad blitz on inquiry
The Australian Bankers Association has "no intention to run a multi-million dollar campaign along the lines of that pursued by the mining industry" against the Labor government in 2010, Nic Frankham, director of communications and government relations told Banking Day yesterday.The ABA was refuting the key claim in a Fairfax Media report late last week that Steven Munchenberg, chief executive of the ABA, "refused to rule out" an ad blitz of this type.Frankham said Munchenberg had answered a question from the Fairfax reporter speculating that there may be such a campaign with a "no", but then did not rule out such a step when the reporter posed a follow up question to that effect.The ABA's spokesperson reiterated points made since Labor leader Bill Shorten ten days ago spelled out the plan and rationale for a royal commission into the banking and financial services sector."We oppose a royal commission. We know as an industry we need to fix the problems, we know the things to do. The fix ASIC also knows," Frankham said."Claims we would be consider a mining tax style campaign; [this is] not going to happen."