A generous holiday exclusively for finance workers has sparked more anger at Australia’s big banks.
The first Monday in August is traditionally a day off in New South Wales to compensate finance workers for settling the June financial year balances.
Furious TV commentator Prue MacSween lashed out at the concept Accusing ‘b*****d’ banks of ‘cheating’ people out of their money.
“A holiday is a joke for all of us,” MacSween posted online. “From practice, they seem to be taking it easy.
Closing branches. The removal of ATMs, shorter hours when you can find a branch (mine closes for lunch between 12pm and 1pm, just when you need to bank for lunch), ripped us off on interest rates.
“And those poor little diddums need an extra day off. B*****ds the party of them.’
Prue MacSween said she was outraged by bank employees questioning her 100-year-old mother about why she wanted to withdraw money from her account
MacSween later doubled down and told Daily Mail Australia she stands by her comments.
“To say all banks are b*****ds is 100 percent correct,” she said.
“Think about the lack of service you get these days and the increasing costs involved in giving them the pleasure of having your money and making billions off it.
“There’s just no service mentality if you could put your money under the bed.
“When they look us in the eye and say we’ve made the billions they have, they’re really saying we’ve swindled so much money from you to make our shareholders richer.”
MacSween said she had a particularly nasty experience taking her 100-year-old mother to a bank to make a substantial withdrawal.
The bank clerk asked the woman what she was going to do with it.
“It’s none of their goddamn business what she wants to do with it!” MacSween said.
“It’s the Spanish Inquisition, if you want to go in and grab a few thousand you need a letter from your cursed mother saying why you should be allowed the money.
‘It’s just disgusting. It’s your money and they use it to make these huge profits and you have to justify why you’re spending your money.
“They’re so puffed up with their importance and power and if there was a way not to deal with the banks I’d be first in line.”
MacSween accused banks of treating their customers like criminals.
“I’m offended that we’re all being treated like we’re money launderers just because we want to withdraw money,” she said.
“It is disgusting that we are not money launderers.
Banks were closed in NSW on Monday for an obscure but long-held holiday that falls on the first Monday in August
“It’s just outrageous because they’re worried about compensating people out of the billions of dollars in profits.”
Customer resentment has mounted over three of Australia’s ‘big four’ banks that have decided to make some of their branches cashless.
National Australia Bank and Commonwealth Bank refer to these locations as ‘expert centres’ and ‘specialist centres’ respectively.
They refer customers to ATMs if they have ‘daily’ banking.
In March, ANZ defended its decision to remove cash from tellers who argued that only eight percent of customers use branches to get their money, while the vast majority have switched to internet banking.
MacSween was unimpressed by this argument.
“They forced us to go online, close branches and open as we saw fit,” she said.
‘How often do the terminals fail at the shops? And if the internet isn’t working, you can’t even get into your account or use your credit card when you pay at the grocery store.
‘Moreover, of course, older people cannot be expected to do their banking online.
“And with all the scams out there, they’re terrified to do it.”
MacSween also criticized banks that supported “waking” causes, such as the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
The Commonwealth Bank has infuriated the Australian crypto community by imposing a monthly limit that customers can transfer to digital currency exchanges
“I object to my bank and others spending my money, especially if I’m a bank shareholder, on these waking acts, just to signal virtue and make them think they look good,” she said.
“Well, they don’t. It’s blatantly playing politics that they just want to suck up the government.’
On Sunday, Daily Mail Australia reported that the Commonwealth Bank will restrict customers from transferring more than $10,000 to crypto exchanges and associated websites for a month to avoid scams.
Other banks have used the same justification to impose similar blocks on certain sites, albeit without blanket transfer limits, and this has enraged the Australian crypto community.
Digital currency enthusiasts accused the banks of being “afraid” of a competitor threatening to encroach on the traditional financial sector.
How does this actually help stop crypto scams? General rules don’t help anyone. Outrageous,” crypto trader Ben Simpson posted online.
There were a deluge of comments that agreed with him.
A protest movement to use cash only for all payments for a week is gaining momentum on social media
“The banks are scared,” one user wrote.
“They know their days are numbered for defi (decentralized finance), so they think they can bully us out.”
Daily Mail Australia also reported in June that the Commonwealth Bank reserves the right to stop transactions “which in our opinion” are “abusive, harassing or threatening to any person” or “promote or encourage physical or mental harm to any person” .
A bank spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the terms were designed to avoid “addressing the issue of financial abuse in the context of domestic and family violence.”
The increasingly digital financial system led to an Australian ‘Cash-only’ protest movement in July, where participants abstained from all digital financial transactions.
“Pay cash only for all you can from July 3 to 10,” the protest ad read.
“Please be a part of this. Get behind the cash-only movement.
“If everyone is cash-only, it can only benefit us plebs.”
The number of bank branches in Australia has fallen by about 30 percent in the past five years.
And the number of ATMs has dropped even further, with numbers showing they’ve dropped from a high of 14,000 in 2017 to around 6,000 last year.
The Reserve Bank estimated that only 13 percent of transactions were in cash by the end of 2022, a halving in just three years since the start of the Covid pandemic.
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