Not enough Australians know that the Morrison Government is trying to ban cash. They have a Bill before Parliament that starts with transactions above $10,000 but the people pushing this have already said they want to reduce the limit to as low as $2000.
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Why do they want to do it? They claim it is to combat the "black economy" - supposedly small businesses avoiding GST and criminal gangs laundering money.
That claim is rubbish. In a December 12 hearing of the Senate inquiry into this bill the Treasury and other government agencies admitted they have no actual evidence that banning cash will stop tax evasion and money laundering. The evidence shows that Australia's black economy is not large and is in fact shrinking away without a cash ban, and that countries with cash restrictions have much larger economies.
The International Monetary Fund has revealed the real reason they want to ban cash - trap us all in banks so we can't escape policies like negative interest rates, which is when the banks charge us to hold our money.
The IMF says that negative interest rates won't work if people can pull their money out of banks, so governments need to restrict cash. That's also true for another extreme policy called "bail-in", which is when the deposits of bank customers are stolen to prop up failing banks.
This cash ban is an outrageous attack on our rights, including to financial privacy and to not have to use banks. It will only benefit banks.
I encourage all readers to contact (federal MP) David Gillespie to demand he vote against this very bad law.