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Wayno14, simply put, they make more money overseas than their franking account balance allows them to fully pay out the "franking credits" to Australian resident shareholders. This is likely to continue as Australia moves to negative interest rates while the rest of the world experiences growth per capita.
ANZ is hamstrung in Australia from lending to companies within the economy in Australia (interest rates already low are going lower, with more rate cuts planned). 2020 could see negative interest rates in Australia by year's end. ANZ has not been lending as the Australian economy has been going so badly, an economy in recession every 8 years (Australia has had 4 GDP per capita recessions in the last 32).
ANZ is also hampered by Australia politically not really allowing projects like in-situ coal gasification to get the economy moving or allow existing resource companies like Whitehaven, Energy Resources of Australia, South32, Glencore, Anglo American, Origin, AGL to invest in their existing resources or be taken over (to invest) due to Frydenberg's FIRB rules, which are so restrictive, underdeployment of capital is an Australian wide problem.
Retail is better in Australia and getting stronger due to tax cuts (Australia is argued to have one of the highest rates of personal income tax in the world due to its direct/ indirect tax mix but this is insufficient to correct the franking account imbalance between foreign and domestic sources of ANZ's profits.
