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When life is good, as it mostly is in the ‘lucky country’, Australians like to say they’ve got “no wuckin’ forries”.
And for years, few Australians had less to worry about than the country’s bankers and financiers, profitably cossetted in a cosy government-protected cartel in a booming economy, and largely spared the competitive steel that hardens their kind in most other markets.
But then came Australia’s brutal 2017-2019 Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.
In its wake, powerful heads rolled, swords were fallen on, a chastened industry transformed – for the time being. As a gale of revelations of sharp practices blew across the sector, it turned out Australians had so many, er, wuckin’ forries that a book could’ve been written about them.
Vulnerable
Melbourne journalist Daniel Ziffer did. He sat through near every day of the year-long probe and has published what he saw and heard.
Described by one critic as "wucking funderful", Ziffer’s A Wunch of Bankers is part-diary, part-reporting, part-excoriation of an out-of-control industry; the dodgy scams, the lax regulation, the banal venality of the powerful wilfully misguiding the vulnerable.