PM roasts banks over Covid fail.

Australia’s biggest banks have been stymieing business attempts to gain bridging finance for wages before the $130bn JobKeeper payments begin next month, prompting Scott Morrison to order them to be read the riot act.

What does “stymieing” mean? Shall we go to the dictionary.

Stymie. The verb stymie means to obstruct or hinder.

Is this what has been happening?

Australia’s biggest banks have been obstructing business attempts to gain bridging finance for wages.

Seriously? Why would they do that? This sounds more like what has been happening.

NAB chief executive Ross McEwan on Thursday night acknowledged the government’s frustrations and said his bank was “working overtime” to provide assistance. “We’ll (today) launch a dedicated hotline for customers needing support with JobKeeper bridging finance and we’ll also expedite any requests we’ve already received from customers so far,” Mr McEwan said.

“We recognise this funding is critical to keeping businesses afloat, people in jobs, and food on the table for the many people who are doing it tough right now.

“We’re working as quickly as we can, with more than 350 people retrained to support customer facing roles so far, so we can support as many customers as we can over this hurdle.”…

The ABA conceded that while the banks had worked “tirelessly to process applications as quickly as possible”, more needed to be done to keep businesses afloat until they could access the $1500 JobKeeper payments.

I find this unbelievable.

A furious Prime Minister vented his anger about the big four during a phone hook-up with tax commissioner Chris Jordan and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg early on Thursday….

Mr Jordan is believed to have delivered Mr Morrison’s blunt message to the chief executives of ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and NAB in a later phone conference that included Mr Frydenberg and Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar….

One chief executive is believed to have tried to make excuses for the delays on getting cash through to businesses, earning a rebuke from Mr Jordan, who said the banks would have a hard time convincing the Prime Minister of that.

Let me see. Out of nowhere the banks have been landed with a massive increase in responsibility that has come from out of the blue and are struggling to fulfil the obligations that have been placed on them. And I will just add this from the end of the story.

Restaurant and Catering Australia chief executive Wes Lambert said many of the association’s members had been asked to prove their acceptance under the JobKeeper program before receiving their bridging finance. That had not been possible because formal applications for JobKeeper only opened this week.

The one thing I could not find out is how much the government is paying the banks to undertake all of this additional effort.