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NZ First’s Shane Jones has joined the global fight against “woke” banks, taking aim at several banks' attempts to reduce lending and services to fossil fuel businesses. Jones told The Australian newspaper that Australian banks, whose New Zealand subsidiaries dominate the New Zealand market, must stop “being driven by unelected, UN-orientated climate apostles”.  

Now this hoohah about the banks demanding that you prove your climate change worthiness is something I was told about last year. A number of your businesses were asked to outline what exactly you were doing in the fight against global warming. How you were going to achieve your bit towards the fight against climate change. Before you could get any kind of access to bank loans, you had to show your bank, your climate change amelioration credentials - not just your ability to service the loan, but that you understood the impending disaster of climate change, and you are committed to doing all you could to fight it.  

This applied across the board to all business, but now Shane Jones is lending his support to Aussie opposition MPs who want to force banks back to offering services to everyone depending on their ability to pay the loans, not just to pick and choose their clients according to their moral values.  

Banks. Moral values. Whoever would have thought? Where the hell would Australia's economy be without its extractive industries? Would the Nordic states be without their extractive industries?  

This morning on the Mike Hosking Breakfast, Shane Jones put the banks on notice:  

“The banks themselves are writing letters threatening to debank God-fearing regional businesses. They have no options in terms of transactional banking. They are not breaking any commercial, they are not breaking any financial, they are not breaking any statutory laws. What they are doing is offending the luxury beliefs of these directors and executives and their chemtrail ways of wandering around the world spouting about climate change, whilst driving regional New Zealand to penury.  

“I’ve got every right to take them on. I'm astounded that even Kiwibank seems to have swallowed the greenaid here. I mean, if NZ First had have known that Kiwibank was going to be involved in this type of falsehood, it’s highly unlikely we would have agreed for them to recapitalise. I’m hoping that Kiwibank reconsiders their position. 

“Look, every bank in New Zealand has to operate within a license. Why on Earth should a licence be extended to an Aussie owned bank so they can come here, impose their own warped moral priorities, impose their luxury beliefs on garden variety Kiwis eeking out an existence selling minerals from regional New Zealand? What citizen mandated these corporate undertakers to impose this system of belief upon us?” 

Yes. So that's Shane Jones in full flight as only Shane Jones can do. The Herald understands that NZ First is looking at a members' bill that would attempt to achieve something similar to what the Aussie opposition MPs are looking at. From what I understand, from what you told me last year, you can get the money, you just have to pay it at a much higher rate because you're a dirty, filthy polluter and you haven't shown any kind of remorse or attempt to ameliorate the climate change effects of your business.  

The way our system works, the way capitalism works, is we need banks. We need a bank. Most people can't get paid in cash, you have to get paid through a bank. If you want a house, you have to take out a loan. If you want to set up a business, you have to take out a loan. Once the banks start putting riders and caveats on any of their lines based on moral values, not based on your ability to service loans, where does it end?  

Going to be interesting though, the world's biggest financiers and asset managers are increasingly rethinking their approach to climate change initiatives, and the diversity, equity and inclusion policies as Donald Trump is reinstalled in the White House and not letting any grass grow under his feet as he signs executive order after executive order.  

And therein lies the problem with putting moral values on money. Previously, under the other administration, to get money you had to prove your worthiness as a citizen of the 21st century, you had to prove that you were following the commandments of the current generation. It wasn't about your ability to service a loan. It was that you accepted the dogma and you were going to do something practical about it. If you need to fulfil certain values-based criteria to borrow money, then the values will change depending on who is in office, as has happened. If every time an administration with a different ideology comes into power, do the banks then have to change their criteria too? They need to stick to their knitting.  

If it's a sound financial proposition, if a borrower can pay back the loan, then show them the money. Put up, and for the love of all that is holy, shut up.