The hiring of a politically connected industry lobbyist as CEO of the Australian Bankers Association looks no great prop to the industry's precarious dance around parliamentary pressure for a royal commission into the industry.And, in any event, ducking an escalation in the industry inquiry stakes may be a secondary feature in the thinking of the ABA Council. Rather, it may be seeking a fresh perspective on progressing its recent reform programs.The ABA announced on Friday that its Council had selected former Labor premier Anna Bligh as chief executive of the association.  Bligh begins work on April 3rd.She replaces Steven Münchenberg, who leaves the association after close to seven years as CEO.Bligh is currently CEO at YWCA New South Wales, a job she took three years ago (her first position post politics). She served as Labor premier of Queensland from 2007 to 2012.The hiring of a prominent Labor figure to some degree highlights the continuing sensitivity of the ABA and its members to the mounting demands for a royal commission. This risk escalated over the last week by virtue of the reported (but still unverified) threat by one Nationals MP, George Christensen, to abandon the coalition government (a government with a majority of one in the lower house).Over the weekend, Christensen has, however, reiterated his enthusiasm for a thorough bank inquiry.Opposition leader Bill Shorten told media on Saturday it didn't matter who heads the Australian Bankers Association."Nothing less than a royal commission will satisfy me ... Australians are sick and tired of financial scandals," he said.In typical commentary, Shorten said the government had to stop running a "protection racket" for the big banks."On one hand Mr Turnbull doesn't want to have a royal commission into banks and on the other hand he wants to give them billions of dollars in tax giveaways," Shorten said in Darwin on Saturday.On the government side, the employment by the ABA of a Labor identity may also be going over poorly. The Financial Review's chief political correspondent, Phillip Coorey, wrote on Sunday that the Turnbull government had "its nose out of joint" over the appointment."A senior government figure regarded it as an insult and dangerous because the Coalition has been standing alone in defending the banks amid the clamour for a royal commission," Coorey wrote.But in her new role, Bligh will find guiding the ABA's "better banking" reform program a more pressing matter than the politics of multiple, external bank inquiries.In an issues paper last month from his work for the ABA into commissions and payments made to bank staff and third parties, independent reviewer Stephen Sedgwick spelled out that some banks believed that  "significant change is not required."Complementary work by the ABA's governance expert, Ian McPhee, also released last month, warned on "slippage" by the sector.McPhee, in a third quarterly assessment of the association's program, wrote that "it is increasingly apparent that banks will need to reassess the clarity of their service commitment to customers in the light of the industry's initiatives."The sector required "revisions reflected