I wonder if some bank executives in Australia should rewatch of Robert Connolly’s 2001 film The Bank, in which the protagonist, Jim Doyle, when asked why he perpetrated a scam on a bank, replies: “I just hate banks.”

Since the bank levy was announced on budget day, the Australian Bankers Association, led by it chief executive, Anna Bligh, and the big-four banks have sought to suggest it is ruinous for Australia’s economy and an attack on the banks for merely being profitable.

Among the threats has been the suggestion of a “mining tax”-style advertising campaign. One would wonder why any bank CEO talking about the importance of profitability would suggest such a thing, given it would undoubtedly be a complete waste of shareholders’ money.

Unlike mining, which has a vague sense of being vital to our economy but which is largely detached from most Australians, we all have dealings with banks. Where the mining companies ran advertisements about the “true-blue” Aussies working in the sector, it is rather a lot tougher for the banks to do that in light of the constant closure of branches and the removal of staff in place of ATMs.

And the banks have not helped themselves at all. This week Macquarie Bank let it be known through the AFR (a paper that very much sees the large banks as its core constituency) that it was considering upping sticks and moving overseas.

That’s a pretty dumb political response from a bank that owes much to Australian taxpayers from the bank deposit guarantee the Rudd government instituted during the darkest days of the global financial crisis.

During that time the government did everything in its power to ensure the Australian banking system suffered none of the collapses seen around the world. You could argue it did too much – allowing mergers to occur, such as Westpac taking over St George and Commonwealth Bank taking over Bankwest.

Paul Keating soon afterwards suggested as much, arguing: “I wouldn’t have agreed as treasurer to allow St George to go into Westpac, because you go from six banks, seven banks, to four and, in the end, what they’ll do, working on the basis of never give the suckers an even break, they’ll simply put the margins up.”

And yet now that the government is planning a levy of 0.06% on their licensed entity liabilities, well gosh – Armageddon, and time to leave these socialist shores.

The Commonwealth Bank, in its submission to the Treasury on the bank levy, suggested it “works against a number of the government’s core economic goals including supporting business to invest and create jobs, and attracting capital to Australia”.

It also argued: “It contradicts the idea that we want people and businesses in Australia to be productive and successful. The levy implies that being profitable is a negative when, in fact, the banking industry’s profitability benefits and supports the whole economy.”

Rather nicely the line about attacking companies for “being profitable” echoes the line this week from the prime minister suggesting Labor’s insistence on keeping the 2% deficit levy for those earning over $180,000 undermines “aspiration and fairness, while worsening incentives and economic efficiency”.

The line is silly when uttered by the prime minister and equally so when put forward by the banks.

This week in Senate estimates the head of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Wayne Byres, when asked about the impact of the levy on the stability of the financial system, replied: “Those banks are obviously not happy about having to pay the levy. That is true. But even after that levy is paid, they will still be quite profitable institutions.”

Byres went on to state that Apra had come to the view that the levy “was something that the industry could take on. They were never going to be happy about it, obviously, but they could take it on without threatening the resilience of the system or of an individual institution.”

Earlier in the week the head of the Treasury department, John Fraser, also during a Senate estimates hearing, suggested of the economic impacts – specifically relating to interest rates – that “common sense would suggest they are trivial”.

This conforms quite well with research by the progressive thinktank the Australia Institute, whose briefing note on the bank levy counters the claim by the banks that lower returns to shareholders will hurt Australians superannuation balances, by arguing even if banks passed the full cost on to shareholders through reduced dividends, “at most it would impact the average superannuation balance by $7 a year”.

And as for interest rates, the Australia Institute agrees with the advice of the treasurer, Scott Morrison, that homeowners should shop around. The Australia Institute notes that the smaller banks offer home loans on average around one percentage point lower than the big four.

The banks will of course grumble but this levy is not a tax on success or a hit to the stability of either the economy or the financial system. Their problems are much more the work of the banks themselves – including lending practices that have seen housing interest-only loans account for up to 50% of mortgage borrowing. Such loans help fuel the housing-price boom and do much to create a price bubble.

Worries of a bubble led S&P Global to downgrade the credit rating of 23 smaller banks after the budget. It cited concerns that “the risk of a sharp correction in property prices has increased”.

In arguing for the levy, the government has made it clear that the big four and Macquarie are treated as special by the government – and that treatment is worth (in the treasurer’s view) “about a 20 to 40 basis point advantage because of the nature of the regulation and structure of our financial system”.

The bank levy is thus in effect making it explicit that the big four banks and Macquarie are too big to fail.

And crucially, S&P did not downgrade the credit rating of any of those five banks, arguing that it expected they would receive “timely financial support from the Australian government, if needed”.

Effectively, the special treatment the big four banks and Macquarie receive by paying the bank levy also sees them spared a credit rating downgrade and helps not only to keep their borrowing costs down but also (and somewhat perversely) improves their competitive advantage over the smaller banks.

Though I doubt you’ll see any banks thank the government for that.