Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today reminded those who have echoed the CEC’s longstanding call for a “people’s bank”, that a true people’s bank is a Hamiltonian national bank.

Today six leading economists called on Treasurer Wayne Swan to establish a people’s bank, in response to the lack of competition among Australia’s big four banks.

The need for a national people’s bank modelled on the original Commonwealth Bank has been pushed by the CEC for over 15 years: in legislation written in 1994; in its September 2002 full-page advertisement in The Australian newspaper, endorsed by over 600 current and former elected officials; in the party’s 2004 election campaign slogan, “Rebuild the Country with a People’s Bank”; and at every Community Cabinet meeting attended by the CEC over the past eight months.

Most recently, the debate was raised by CEC Queensland State Secretary Jan Pukallus, when she asked Wayne Swan at the 30^th June Logan City Community Cabinet meeting why he doesn’t do what Jack Lang and John Curtin did in the ’30s and ’40s—freeze the debt, implement a debt moratorium, and nationalise the banks.

Mrs Pukallus had prefaced her question by challenging Rudd’s assertion that Australia’s big four banks are amongst the top 11 banks in the world, saying “they’re not Australian at all; we sold off the only Australian bank we had—the Commonwealth bank!”

(Rudd did not allow Swan to take the question; instead, he declared the CEC’s American collaborator, physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, “right off the planet”.)

Mr Isherwood observed, “It’s great to see people are starting to realise we were right to call for a people’s bank, but we must make sure we get it right.

“A true people’s bank is not a copy of New Zealand’s Kiwibank; it must be based on the original Commonwealth Bank.”

Mr Isherwood cited the great Labor Party leader John Curtin’s formula for a national bank, spelled out in his election speech at the Fremantle Town Hall in 1937:

“Three related monetary measures are necessary,” John Curtin said,
“1. National control of credit to ensure its adequacy to maintain and increase employment.
“2. National control of interest rates, in order to keep to a minimum the monetary and capital costs on production and industry.
“3. National direction of investment with the object of assisting in the promotion of a balanced economic development.”

Curtin concluded that, “If the Government of the Commonwealth deliberately excluded itself from all participation in the making or changing of monetary policy it cannot govern except in a secondary degree.”

Mr Isherwood continued, “What this debate shows is that we are now discovering what Curtin warned of in 1937—the government has excluded itself from monetary policy, and, consequently, they cannot govern.

“Ironically, the strongest opponents to Curtin’s position, are from the modern, degenerated version of his own Labor Party, and the current Prime Minister, who told us ad nauseam in 2007 election ads, ‘I’m an economic conservative, I believe in the independence of the Reserve Bank.’

“Curtin didn’t believe in the independence of the central bank; he believed in a government-owned and -run national bank, and remember, he saved Australia, in World War II.”

Mr Isherwood concluded, “The issue for the Rudd government is whether they intend to keep governing on behalf of what Old Labor denounced as the ‘Money Power’, or whether they intend to change their ways and begin governing for the people. The people will soon let them know about it if they don’t.”

Click here to see a 4-minute trailer for the DVD which lays out the CEC’s program to exit the global economic crisis: The Homeowners & Bank Protection Bill—The Only Solution.