Govt by shonks and spivs for shonks and spivs—this is what the Liberal Party has come down to:
This decision is disappointing but the reason seems obvious enough—they want these shonks and spivs the freedom to ruin more unsophisticated investors while the shonks and spivs enrich themselves, bit like ticks and leeches, yuck!
The decision by the federal government to reject a bipartisan call for a royal commission into the Commonwealth Bank was always on the cards, but its reasoning was both disappointing and shallow.
Its response to a landmark Senate inquiry into the performance of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, outlined in a press release on Friday, essentially says CBA's revised compensation scheme, a so-called "open advice review", is enough.
This glib response fails to take into account the Senate's original call for a royal commission; that it was "unable to get answers from the regulator or the bank". "We tried and failed and decided it is important that this is cleared up," it said. What it did was take a dissenting report by one of its own, Liberal senator David Bushy, and embrace it.
The compensation scheme requires customers to apply for a review of their advice. Unfortunately many have not seen advertisements in the newspapers so do not know the program is under way. It goes some way to explaining why less than 5000 people have come forward. There are tens of thousands of victims who might miss out. In sharp contrast, Macquarie Bank is writing to 160,000 victims to alert them to their compensation scheme.
A royal commission would have examined the role of management in the CBA's financial planning scandal. All got off scot-free. Some are still with CBA while others were parachuted into other organisations, taking with them an aggressive sales culture and addiction to bonuses that was driven by advisers selling more products to consumers, oftentimes not in their best interests. They need to be held to account.
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/call-on-commbank-royal-commission-disappointing-a...