Banks know there's a bad mood rising

The Big Four Australian-owned banks know that the public mood is against them, because, well, they're interest gouging, profit-taking, tax dodgers - there's not much to like!

But they're trying to do the impossible and suck up to us anyway. See the NZ Herald article below, 'Banks: your new best friend'. In the article, the BNZ's person in charge of media spin, Dianne Maxwell, says "Banks just genuinely believe that we need to be a part of the community". That's a hard sell when you've just been caught avoiding $661 million of tax.

This clumsy attempt at sucking up to us could seriously backfire. Most people will see it for what it is, and if we can highlight the banks' deception, perhaps we can turn the mood even more sour against them. And in doing so we can seek to achieve a higher public profile for pro-grassroots policy demands like removing GST off food and introducing a Financial Transaction Tax instead, which would force the banks and other "fat cat" financial speculators to pay a greater share of the tax burden than they do now.

Banks: your new best friend

by Adam Bennett
from NZ Herald
7 November 2009

You may have noticed the big Australian-owned banks trying to cuddle up to you lately.

In one television commercial a big clumsy Westpac guy, prompted by wordless admonitions from a bunch of everyday Kiwis, eventually does the right thing by going to some inconvenience to retrieve his discarded icecream wrapper from the sea.

ASB Bank, on the other hand, is trying to convince people it is one of us, running adverts telling us it has been a "Kiwi bank" since 1847.

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