The South Australian Government should move its billions of dollars in business away from the big five banks, one minister has suggested, as tensions over the proposed bank levy intensify.
The state's Liberal Opposition has decided to block a proposed state budget measure imposing a levy on five major banks.
It said reducing taxes was vital to the state's future prosperity.
Investment and Trade Minister Martin Hamilton-Smith, who is a former leader of the state Liberals and now an independent MP on the Labor Government's frontbench, said the Government would be one of the Commonwealth Bank's biggest customers.
But he questioned whether that should continue, given the bank has been part of a fierce campaign against the South Australian Government's plan to impose the levy.
"If you want to sledge the South Australian Government then sledge us," he said.
"I think we need to send a very clear message to the big banks that we don't want to bank with you, and we might also send that message to our schools, our hospitals, the businesses with whom we deal. Our partners in business.
"If the big [five] banks have no confidence in South Australia, let's go to the Bendigo Adelaide Bank or one of the other options we have and let's move the billions of dollars of State Government business."
Mr Hamilton-Smith also suggested the State Government should launch a media campaign to encourage the public to leave the major banks.
Blocking budget measures 'poisonous'
Despite his comments, the bank levy is unlikely to go ahead, with the Australian Conservatives and Nick Xenophon's SA Best team also vowing to block it in the Legislative Council.
But that is a move the former Liberal leader also warned against, describing blocking budget measures as a poison, that has already spread through both sides of politics in Canberra.
"That poison, at the instigation of those opposite, is now threatening to spread like a cancer through South Australia," he said.
"You've opened a can of worms.
"You have licensed a future Labor opposition to do to you exactly what you do to them, which is to destroy and cherrypick every budget you bring forward."
Bank comments spiteful: Opposition
Although Mr Hamilton-Smith said he was speaking as an independent, Opposition spokesman Rob Lucas said he speaks with the authority of being a member of the Government, and has accused him of creating policy out of spite.
"This is the person responsible for speaking to businesses interstate and overseas and trying to attract them to South Australia," Mr Lucas said.
"He is actually saying because one business has had the temerity to oppose an appalling government decision in a budget that therefore revenge should be wreaked upon that particular business by taking away a long-term contract that they've legally entered into."
