Morrison denies bank talks special

FEDERAL Treasurer Scott Morrison has defended his move to convene an urgent meeting with the chairs of the big four banks, saying he meets with them regularly.

Mr Morrison has summoned the chairs of the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and National Australia Bank to a series of private meetings amid mounting internal pressure from Coalition MPs for an inquiry into the conduct of the banks.

It is believed the Treasurer’s office requested appointments as soon as possible for Mr Morrison with CBA’s Catherine Livingstone, ANZ’s David Gonski, Westpac’s Lindsay Maxsted and NAB’s Ken Henry.

The meetings would be held before the delayed sitting of the House of Representatives on December 4.

Mr Morrison defended convening an urgent meeting.

“I speak to the CEOs and executives as you would expect me to do,” he said. “I meet every month with the Reserve Bank.”

Mr Morrison said he also met every month with Wayne Byres, the chairman of bank- ing regulator the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, “as you’d expect me to”.

“I meet with the council of financial regulators and one of the things we did at the Council of Financial Regulators earlier this year is we put in place the new measures around interest-only lending and that measure on interest-only lending has been incredibly successful.”

APRA this year told the nation’s banks to limit interestonly loans to 30 per cent of new mortgage lending.

“So, look, I meet with them all the time. I’ll be having further discussions with a number of them today,” Mr Morrison said.

“For some years now, I’ve been talking to the banks about resolving some legacy cases where people have had issues.”

Former prime minister John Howard attacked the push for a royal commission into the banking industry as “rank socialism”.

If the Coalition embraced such a polity, it would damage the Turnbull government’s fortunes, Mr Howard said.

Malcolm Turnbull yesterday ruled out a banking royal commission.