Vikki Campion:

In days past, banks had one job: Keep deposits safe while lending money to those who were creditworthy. They acted within the law.

If something stacked up financially and was legal, they did it.

Today, the banks think they are both virtue police and corporate judges, deciding who is worthy of financial services based on their own ideological biases, refusing so far to exit a tight clique and church called the Net Zero Banking Alliance.

If bankers want to play politics they should resign, join a party, and run for office. There’s a couple of parties suited to them. They’re called the Greens and the Climate 200 teals.

Don’t use our money, our mortgaged assets, and our businesses as a plaything for your personal views.

The old-age immorality of usury has now converted to the new-age immorality of carbon dioxide. Both absurdities.

In a democracy, we elect leaders to make decisions; if we don’t like them, we vote them out.

Most people had no idea what they were signing up for when governments and corporations promised Net Zero.

Now they are seeing the ugly reality of it: Soaring power and grocery bills as food and power production apparently becomes immoral, rising inflation, houses that won’t be built because of green tape.

Aussie banks, which once focused on creditworthiness, now focus on so-called environmental worthiness, restricting or refusing funds to lend to farmers, miners, and any business that doesn’t comply with their beliefs.

Australian banking executives are now playing politics, and if they want to do that, they should play by the same rules as politicians.

Westpac CEO Anthony Miller, NAB CEO Andrew Irvine, Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn and ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott should be subject to the same scrutiny as our elected officials if they want to play this game.

Senate estimates could go through the entrails of their personal finances, every share, that little house on the coast, the trusts of their wives and children.

For bank bosses, a run in politics would be an exercise in public transparency they have never known.

Every personal business dealing, every gift, every income stream, every ticket to every corporate box or VIP event, every trust, and every asset would need to be disclosed to public opprobrium.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has learnt the hard way, they will learn that talking about climate change and buying houses too close to the harbour won’t fly.

Or the teals who came in to save the world, and then we discovered they owned shares in a bunch of those so-called terrible carbon-emitting companies for profit.

In 2024, 77 million Americans voted for change, not because they adored Donald Trump, who they were told was a sexist, racist, rapist, but because they despised the creeping control of their lives by those who think they know better than the rest of us.

In Australia, the political class wrings its hands about Trump. “Nothing to do with us,” they say.

But people talk about how they’re sick of being told what to do by a branch of self-righteous, unelected, corporate enforcers who go from chauffeured car to private plane to private boardroom and could easily go weeks, months, maybe their entire lifetime sheltered from ever seeing the consequences of their decisions.

If the banks won’t act like banks, then it’s time our elected representatives force them to.

Yet it wasn’t the leadership in the ALP who took them on.

It was the free spirits on the Coalition backbench, including Senators Matt Canavan and Alex Antic, and backbenchers Garth Hamilton, Terry Young, Henry Pike, Llew O’Brien, Col Boyce, and David Gillespie (two, I should disclose, I have worked for).

Once again, this group will lead the debate and others will heroically trot after them later.

“At a time when Australian families are struggling with an unprecedented fall in living standards, we believe that the priority of all major political and business leaders should be on improving the strength of the Australian economy,” they wrote in a letter to Mr Irvine, Mr Miller, Mr Comyn and Mr Elliott, calling for them to exit Net Zero BankingAlliance and the large restrictions on lending that put Australians at a distinct disadvantage.

I look forward to their virtue display at the next AGM when they explain to their shareholders they are leaving for politics to authentically change the world on their ticket and time – not ours.