NZ politician looking to break Aussie grip on banking market
(24 July 2017 – New Zealand) A New Zealand politician, tipped to hold the balance of power in the upcoming General Election, is pushing for a banking inquiry, claiming that Australia’s banks are “like a hole in the hull of the New Zealand economy”
New Zealand First’s Winston Peters told online publication interest.co.nz that a key problem currently is the “extraction of over $4 billion in profits” out of the NZ economy as a consequence of Australian dominance of NZ banking through the Australian owned ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac.
“That’s a huge amount of money coming out of an economy in any given year. When the BNZ was sold [in 1992] six out of 10 banking clients were with the BNZ. That was a massive loss. We’re saying this level of foreign ownership, and in key institutions, is seriously bad for our economy because it disguises the state of the economy as it relates to benefits for New Zealanders,” Peters said…
Should the party hold sway, Peters says NZ First will begin “the long overdue process” of bringing the banking sector back into NZ ownership. According to the Reserve Bank, the four Australian owned banks account for almost 90 percent of aggregate bank assets in NZ.
“As a first step we will make Kiwibank the Government’s official trading bank. It is absurd that a foreign bank Westpac should be clipping the ticket on all the NZ Government’s business and financial transactions,” Peters says.
Questioned if he would support public funding into Kiwibank to build the bank into a position where it could takeover all the Government’s business, Peters replied, “Taxpayers money is going into Westpac right now so what would the difference be? The benefit of course would be that the money would be staying in our economy, not going offshore.”
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