That is the case with our big four banks, which are among the most profitable in the world. Because they handle just about all the financial dealings our government, rightly so, has guaranteed the world that they will never go bust. And this has meant that the Big Four can borrow money from overseas at a considerably cheaper rate than those without such an iron-bound guarantee, and that helps them make those huge profits.

Now, with that in mind, if you or I went to borrow money for, say, a home or to start a business, we would have to sign a document that included the fact that we would pay an insurance (usually to a company owned by the same bank) in case we went bankrupt and couldn’t repay that loan.

That seems reasonable, but the beneficiary of that insurance payment is not you (who pay the premiums) but the bank itself. You simply go bust. The bank is given the guarantee by our government (that means ultimately you and me) that it will never go bankrupt, no matter what happens. No wonder they are raking in the money and making billions of dollars profit each quarter.

These are the organisations (financially guaranteed by you and me) that even own insurance companies, which are so tight in their financial dealings that they have been found to have refused to pay legitimate claims from people who have taken out legitimate policies with them.

These huge profits must be great for investors and that could mean the people who handle our superannuation but, on the other hand, if the banks were a bit less greedy with their soaring profits, maybe they could relax the increasingly huge cost of buying a home.

It could also mean that other industries, such as those that feed us and pay for other essential services might be able to reduce their costs to us and, at the same time, make their industries more profitable. Just about everyone contributes, one way or another, to the banks’ huge profits.

And yet the Federal Government, which so generously backs them with these guarantees, refuses to create a Royal Commission into their activities, just to check that the huge profits they make are made legitimately.

Indeed, there needs to be a top-level investigation into other aspects of the financial industry, but Mr Turnbull’s team is horrified at the thought that their very close and generous friends in the finance industry could be considered anything but completely honest.

Maybe we need a Royal Commission into the reasons why the political parties are so protective of their ‘financial friends’.

It has been reported that the National Broadband Network will be completed in about four years and it is said that it will make a vast difference to our lives, opening the way for everyone to benefit from future electronic developments.

The NBN chief executive Bill Morrow has released corporate plans that indicate the NBN should have a revenue of $5 billion in 2020. That is 25 per cent more than it had previously expected to produce.

The whole project is expected to have cost $54 billion. The risks were taken and the costs were provided by the Australian people and, if history gives any indication, the government of the day will sell the whole project so that private investors will be able to rake in those huge profits.

Why? Are our politicians (of whatever party) suggesting they are very bad managers and that private operators will do a better job than the people who took the risks and financed its construction (that’s you and me, the ordinary taxpayers)? It will be the old story, the people take the risks and the investors take the profits.

Why? Why this belief by politicians that they aren’t capable of running a profit-making enterprise and it is better to sell off (they call it privatisation) the projects that have been financed by the people. Is it that they believe that only private investors deserve the profits? If that is the case should there be a campaign to get better politicians? People who are better managers than our present political class who seem to fear profit-making ventures being owned by the people?

We really need a big campaign by the present day voters to tell the politicians (of whatever party) that we are fed up with privatisation and with politicians who want to sell off the farm. We would be a much wealthier country if we still owned the farm and enjoyed its profits. Once the people of Australia owned a whole range of services from insurance companies to the railways, to Telecom and the Commonwealth Bank and their operations were overseen by small groups of Federal parliamentarians; but, of course, in those days the politicians were mainly people who had the future of our country, and its people, well in mind. They were not the ‘professional’ politicians we have these days who seem to be incapable of managing this sort of community service, such as the NBN.

Maybe we can hope that by the time the NBN is finished and in full operation and making good money there will be some idealists running our country, people who have the ability and the common sense to realise the long-term profits for the people who could own and benefit from such a magnificent, long-term investments such as the NBN.

After all, it was financed by the people, just like our forebears financed all those assets we once owned, such as Telstra. But, of course, that would mean a new type of politician, not one those who take the easy way of continually selling off the farm that his forebears worked so hard to develop.