THE NEWS WRAP: Major ANZ glitch forces $70m in refunds

The ANZ Bank has refunded $70 million to 235,000 home loan customers, with some errors dating as far back as 2003 and leading to the bank to review all its home loan, savings and small business accounts.

“Part of our ongoing program of work at the moment is to make sure that all of our accounts are performing in accordance with the terms and conditions documents that are out there,” ANZ’s Australian head, Phil Chronican, says.

“When you discover an issue of this nature, you want to be 100% sure that you haven’t got anything else of that nature in your business, so we’ve been reviewing all of our products.

“We literally are going through every product, every terms and conditions booklet, and checking the systems against the products against the terms and conditions.”

Hockey’s hard line on SPC Ardmona

Treasurer Joe Hockey has taken a hard line on any federal government bailouts of struggling food company SPC Ardmona, which is asking for $25 million in assistance.

“If we’re asking the Australian people to help the government to live within its means, then corporate Australia must also follow,” Hockey said.

“The parent company of SPC Ardmona, Coca-Cola Amatil, which is an Australian company, in the first six months of this year had a profit of over $215 million, for six months, and yet there is a request for $50 million of taxpayers’ money.

“I think you can understand why we are being very cautious, very careful about handing out taxpayers’ money to companies that are profitable let alone companies that aren’t profitable.”

Abbott pressures Shorten over ABCC reintroduction

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has reiterated calls to reintroduce the Howard government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).

In a stinging attack on Labor, Abbott questioned whether opposition leader Bill Shorten supported law-abiding citizens or was “on the side of people with a tendency to break the law”.

“Are they [Labor] on the side of getting to the bottom of this or do they want to support a culture of cover-up?” Abbott says.

“And this is a very serious question for the Leader of the Opposition and obviously he’ll have the chance to answer it to pretty soon.”

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down to 15,7606.6 points. The Aussie dollar is down to US87.34 cents.