Eleven days to go to have your say against the cash ban!

The deadline for submissions to the Senate inquiry into the $10,000 cash ban bill is Friday 15 November—11 days away.

We now have clear evidence that the government does not want to deal with thousands of submissions from Australians objecting to this law. So let’s make sure they have to—prioritise making your submission straight away.

In documents released through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, Treasury revealed it received more than 3,500 submissions on the cash ban in August, but dismissed 3,400 of them as a campaign by the Citizens Electoral Council.

This was a disgusting response from Treasury. First, 3,500 submissions is an astounding amount, especially as Treasury had released the bill for consultation late on a Friday evening when nobody would have been paying attention, and allowed only two weeks for submissions. A typical Treasury consultation receives only 30 submissions on average.

As the CEC has said, that many submissions is not feedback, it’s blowback!

The 3,500 submissions proved the breadth of public opposition to this law, and disrupted Treasury’s plan to quietly go through the motions of a public consultation that hardly anybody knew about, slip the bill into Parliament without anybody noticing, and probably getting it passed with most MPs and Senators absent from the chambers (as they did the APRA bail-in law in February 2018).

While the CEC enjoys seeing evidence that we are on the minds of the powers that be, Treasury knows this characterisation is false—3,400 submissions is much bigger than just a campaign by the CEC.

Numerous organisations and individuals also opposed the cash ban, and independently spread the word to make submissions. Economist John Adams and Martin North were the first to warn about the government’s intention in an episode of their Interests Of The People (IOTP) YouTube show in March 2019: “A War On Cash Is A War On The People”.

After receiving word of Treasury’s 26 July release of the bill, Adams and North recorded a 30 July IOTP episode that received 92,000 views entitled: “Red Alert: ScoMo Declares War On The Australian People”, which urged viewers to make submissions to Treasury.

John Adams has written an official letter of complaint against Treasury for its false characterisation.

Others who spread the word include anti-corruption campaigner Helen Edwards, Bank Reform Now, Florian Heise of the Heise Says YouTube channel, and many more through word of mouth. The 3,400 objections were achieved with virtually no media coverage, which itself reflects how the message went viral because so many people were instantly opposed and motivated to express their objection.

Make your submission now

It’s wrong to think that submissions “don’t work”. In truth, they both terrify and infuriate the institutions of government, which prefer to run things as a cosy club and ignore the public. Large numbers of submissions prove the public will no longer be ignored. However, it sometimes takes a while for the message to sink in, which is why we must do it again and again.

This week’s episode of The CEC Report, now The Citizens Report, includes instructions on making a submission, and suggestions on what to include.

The Senate inquiry is an opportunity to escalate the opposition to the cash ban even more than Treasury experienced. Watch The Citizens Report and make your submission today.