SYDNEY (Reuters) – Rebel government lawmakers in Australia vowed on Monday to force a powerful inquiry into the country’s scandal-hit banking sector, further turmoil for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he languishes in the polls amid a citizenship crisis.
The threatened move is a major embarrassment for Turnbull, who has already rejected public and opposition calls for such an inquiry, and an unpalatable prospect for the country’s Big Four banks who hold a combined A$3.6 trillion ($2.72 trillion) in assets.
The banks have already faced a grilling in recent months by cross-party parliamentary committees over scandals including providing misleading financial advice, insurance fraud and rate-rigging.
But the probe being pushed by a handful of conservative government lawmakers would turn up the heat on the banks, with the power to compel executives to testify, to demand documents and to recommend both prosecutions and new legislation.
“It’s time for these people to have their day in court,” government Senator Barry O‘Sullivan, a member of the junior coalition partner, the National Party, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio.
O‘Sullivan said he was “disappointed” and “angry” that conservatives’ attempts to make major amendments to that same-sex bill were swept aside last week. He stopped short of saying the banking bill was payback by the right faction, but noted he was “simply following along” in the footsteps of the same-sex bill.
Bligh seized on those rifts, as the government took the unusual step of cancelling a week of sitting parliament in the lower house, which will allow Joyce to be present for a vote on the banking bill if he wins a by-election for his reinstatement.
“What we’re seeing is a parliament that’s becoming increasingly unstable, it’s not clear to anybody where votes might happen in the next couple of weeks,” she told ABC radio.
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