Trivial? The courts should be left to decide banking class action

My phone rang one day and the person on the other end identified themself as an ANZ Bank New Zealand officer and that’s all the identification I ever got.

The officer proceeded to tell me that they feared the bank was engaging in a cover-up to escape the consequences of what amounted to inadequate systems, including ANZ’s failure to check whether a calculator it created would deliver accurate answers – it delivered incorrect answers.

Journalists often receive such leaks and we’re always aware that such whistleblowers almost always have ulterior motives and an agenda to push.

So, we check as much as can be checked – I can’t remember the myriad times that I’ve started to check out a tip, only to discover there’s no substance to it or anything worthy of a story, or it doesn’t lead where the tipster wanted the story to go.

But the ANZ officer’s story checked out in most of its particulars and ANZ’s decision then was to “come clean” and then-chief financial officer Antonia Watson fronted for her bank.