Banking for people not profit

Commercial banks are raking in profits at the expense of working class people at every stage of their life. When workers go to buy a house, put away some savings or plan for their retirement they are at the mercy of banks set up to use our savings, super funds and debt bondage to finance the investment of billionaires. The housing affordability crisis is being fuelled by a profit bonanza for the banks who benefit from the ballooning debt of working class households. Just last year the big four alone made nearly $30 billion in profits.

The Royal Commission into banking was a waste of time. Another PR exercise by a political class unwilling to do anything about the super-profits being hoarded by the big four banks. The banking system is at the heart of capitalism and it's built on the premise that the ultra-wealthy can live a life of luxury off a passive income while working class people are forced to mortgage their futures and gamble on their retirements.

We need a bank that is run in the public interest; one that provides security for workers' savings, funds socially useful infrastructure, provides working people credit for housing at a reasonable, below-market rate and whose profits are put back into the community, rather than into the pockets of billionaires.

We’ll fight for

• Establish a State Bank of New South Wales, whose charter will mandate that it protect savings and lend according to criteria encompassing the interests of society as a whole, rather than the narrow, profit-driven criteria of commercial banks.
• Return revenues above operating costs to a government fund to finance the construction of public housing and other infrastructure and amenities.
• Offer owner-occupier home loans at below market rates.
• Not offer loans to residential property investors.
• Offer priority lending for public housing construction, renewable energy projects, water management projects, public infrastructure, and high-value manufacturing that provides high-waged work under union-negotiated agreements.
• Impose a state-based Bank Profits Tax on commercial banks operating in NSW at 20 percent of annual profits, calculated in proportion to NSW's gross state product (30.8 percent), with legislation to prevent the cost being passed on to customers.