Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians expect their bank to safeguard their money and to be alert to anything untoward going on. But too often this isn't the case. For instance, just last week, a couple recounted how they'd had $250,000 stolen by a financial adviser, who used the money to gamble. That is of course terrible in itself, but what was more alarming was that the bank, CommBank, thought there was nothing unusual in their account holder, earning maybe $100,000 a year, having his personal account turn over some $10 million on 52 online gambling sites.

Last week, I also learned of a CommBank low-income customer who'd been loaned money repeatedly, even though it was obvious that the funds were mostly going to gambling companies and payday lenders. Good grief, what is going on here? We know the banks have algorithms to detect and capitalise on just about anything they choose, so either they choose not to identify some suspicious matters or they do identify such things but then wilfully disregard them. And, in any case, they say it's everyone else's fault—not theirs.

The Commonwealth Bank sure hasn't been keen to quickly find an acceptable remedy in the cases I've cited. Well, I won't be a party to this, so expect me to have a lot more to say about such matters during the term of this parliament.