David Murray is not a glass is half-full guy when it comes to ASIC's plan to nail companies for "culture breach" and the banking sector's use of "risk weights", i.e. models that allow banks to assume their home loans are much less risky than loans of other banks.
And he sure knows how to sell his message in terms that even talkback radio listeners can understand.
"If you get pulled up by the cops for a breath test, there's not much point saying to them, well look I'm on the IRB," the former Commonwealth Bank boss told the AFR banking summit on Tuesday.
"My neighbour, he shouldn't drive after two middies, but I can do 10, it's on my IRB model," said Murray in what must be the best bank/beverage analogy since Gail Kelly's Westpac used the "banana smoothie" explanation of why the bank needed to nearly double the 25-basis point Reserve Bank interest rate rise in December 2009.
Murray really saved his talkback radio venom for ASIC's culture war.
"ASIC is pursuing this notion that you can have liability for a culture breach. It is absolutely impossible to legislate for that. In fact you could argue that it's anti-competitive, because you can't have the same culture for everyone by definition – a great culture is competitive advantage," he said.
"It's anti-competitive. It's inefficient. And to be perfectly candid again, there have been people in the world who've tried to enforce culture. Adolf Hitler comes to mind."
Whoa David.
Does this mean he intends to protect errant directors and executives . It certainly shows why CBA is in a mess. Someone who had thisn attitude would do nothing to change a culture
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