Banks get back to core business as woke fades

Janet Albrechtsen / The Australian January 22, 2025
News that the Coalition is preparing a policy to stop banks from refusing credit and banking facilities to perfectly legal industries on environmental, social and governance grounds is a major development. Staring down this modern fad, commonly referred to as debanking, is one step in the fightback against the hijacking of corporate Australia by tiny minorities of noisy but influential progressive activists. Ordinary Australians can only have cheered when Peter Dutton slammed Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and other banks, after the regional bank refused, on ESG grounds, to lend to a family-owned Tasmanian forestry business with a long history and track record.
The Opposition Leader doesn’t only have bank snobbery about forestry in mind. Dutton damned all banks refusing to lend to legal Australian businesses in deference to the ESG demands of proxy advisers and industry super funds. Fossil fuel businesses, for example, are legitimate, profitable and creditworthy businesses that have been effectively debanked on the say-so of proxy advisers, industry funds and sundry activists. Continue reading Have you been debanked?
















