Petition: Stop Scott Morrison from banning cash to trap Australians in banks!

The Citizens Electoral Council has today launched a Change.org petition against Scott Morrison’s totalitarian ban on cash transactions over $10,000. The ban is contained in the draft Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019, which is intended as a first step to a cashless society in which individuals will have no privacy in their financial affairs, and will be trapped in the private banking system.

The proposed cash ban is finally starting to get mainstream media coverage.

• The Newcastle Herald reported on 12 August, “$10,000 cash limit on way”, and followed up with a 13 August editorial, “Bigger questions about ban on cash”.
   
• ABC today posted an online report by Nassim Khadem, “Paying more than $10,000 in cash could make you a criminal under proposed law”.
   
• The Daily Mail today reported on “The ridiculous new laws that could see Australians JAILED for paying cash sums of more than $10,000—as fears mount of a ‘destructive’ recession”.

The press coverage reports that One Nation has declared its opposition to the cash ban bill. Today Bob Katter MP also announced his strong opposition in a hard-hitting press release headlined: “Katter labels Cash Bill a ‘danger to our freedom greater than the danger through terrorism’”.

“The danger here to our freedom is greater than the danger to our lives through terrorism”, Mr Katter said. “Clearly there are a thousand reasons why people like to hide a little bit of wealth; and have access to cash.”

Mr Katter quoted George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984 saying “Big Brother is watching”, and said that a person’s right to privacy with some of their wealth is one of the most important rights that Australians have.

“The Government will argue that this is the one and only initiative that they will implement to eliminate the black economy however, once the bill is introduced and passed, they will have the flexibility to dictate many more amendments to the law. It will give the police the power to control your cash over $10,000. Once the legislation is in place, they have opened the doors to regulate and change as they see fit. The assumption that our cash transactions are due to unsavoury activity allows for the prosecution of the potentially innocent, it has always been innocent until proven guilty?”

Sign the petition

To warn as many Australians as possible about this cash ban bill before it is introduced into Parliament in September, the CEC has today launched the following petition on change.org:

Stop Scott Morrison from banning cash to trap Australians in banks!

Scott Morrison’s Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019 is a fraudulent assault on the freedoms of Australians.

Banning cash transactions over $10,000 will not end the tax evasion and money laundering of the “black economy”, but will strip individuals of their right to privacy in financial affairs, and trap them in private banks, unable to escape policies such as “bail-in” and negative interest rates.

It is outrageous that this cash ban is a recommendation of one of the big four global accounting firms, KPMG, which wrote the 2017 Black Economy Taskforce report and is already lobbying for the limit to be reduced to $2,000.

KPMG and its fellow big four firms are complicit in the overwhelming majority of tax evasion and money laundering, which is perpetrated by their clients in multinational banks and corporations, not by individuals using cash.

If this cash ban is enacted, the government clearly intends more restrictions, as the law has been drafted so that the exemptions to the ban, such as for withdrawing cash from a bank, can be removed by the Minister at any time. The private banks already impose unreasonable restrictions on the ability of Australians to access their own cash.

We the undersigned call on Parliament to:

• respect the right of Australians to use cash for privacy and as an alternative to the banks;
• scrap this bill and the cash ban policy; and
• crack down on the real black economy by going after multinational banks and corporations, the big four accounting firms, and the tax havens.

Click here to sign and share the petition.

Important note: This is a different petition to the bail-in petition that the CEC has circulated since June, which will be tabled in Parliament next month. Even if you have signed the bail-in petition, please sign this cash ban petition too! Change.org petitions are entirely online, and can be shared widely through Facebook and Twitter, etc. Every time someone signs, a message is sent to a nominated list of politicians to notify them of the public opposition to this law. Don’t just sign yourself, but share widely to get as many other people as you can to sign also.

What else you can do

Call MPs and Senators before Parliament resumes in September, to tell them you strongly object to this law, and will vote against them if they support it. That’s the best way to get the message through to politicians that they shouldn’t just go along with this agenda, but should represent their constituents. Click here to find contact details for MP and Senators.