WE CAN’T BANK ON WESTPAC SUPPORT

WE have only four big banks. Now Westpac, the second biggest, refuses to fund coal projects that would give Australians jobs.

And it has done this to buy off the kind of Green ratbags who turned its 200th birthday party into a fiasco. Can we afford to have a powerful bank be so gutless? So open to blackmail? So ready to sabotage our future?

Westpac last week announced it would not fund coal mines in new areas such Queensland’s Galilee basin, home of the giant Adani project.

That doesn’t just mean no Westpac loans for Adani, which is opposed by global-warming extremists. It also means no loans for as many as five other potential mines near it.

The bank claims this is about “supporting climate change solutions that will drive the transition to a more sustainable economic model”.

But where is the evidence that banning coal creates a “more sustainable economic model”?

How sustainable is South Australia, which destroyed its coal-fired generators and had its lights go off?

Nor does warming seem so dangerous. The little warming we’ve actually seen, whether manmade or natural, has not dried our dams or made cyclones worse or more numerous. The world’s grain crops have even set new records.

So what’s really driving Westpac? It’s sure not science, and it’s sure not economics.

Here is a clue. Westpac’s bosses were mortified three weeks ago when the bank’s 200th birthday bash was ruined by an anti-Adani coalmine protester who chained himself to scaffolding above the stage for 90 minutes.

A week later, 100 more antiAdani protesters stormed the bank’s Bendigo office, in a state where police give up booking such activists since Victoria’s courts almost never convict. Others have plastered Westpac ATMs with anti-coal propaganda in a campaign of intimidation.

But how many Green protesters actually are Westpac depositors or lenders? That a huge bank can cave in like this to the thuggery of a tatty few and to the potential cost of so many Australians is a serious worry, and it may be time to fight fire with fire.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan is now urging Australians to boycott Westpac for giving into Green extremists. Why not?

In fact, I’d be scared to invest in a weak bank which based funding decisions on irrational fears. Can you trust Westpac with your cash — or our future?