Bendigo supports financial system inquiry
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has called for another parliamentary inquiry into Australia's financial system to address the banking system's reliance on offshore funding.Bank chairman Robert Johanson told shareholders he hoped the Senate's inquiry into banks would result in a better articulation of proper community expectations for the banking system than the current political furore over banks' profits and interest rates."Hopefully it will not just be a whinge session," he said at Bendigo's annual meeting, held simultaneously in Adelaide and Bendigo on Wednesday.Johanson also supported calls for "another Campbell-type inquiry into the financial system" at yesterday's meeting.Such an inquiry, he said, "would also be warranted, not a Wallis-type inquiry into bank regulation where Australia's system proved so successful over the past decade."I certainly hope it will have a more ambitious brief than [Joe] Hockey's list of nine questions," Johansen said.Johanson told shareholders an inquiry into the financial system was needed to address Australian banks' reliance on offshore funding.