Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan needs to swing into action and compel Australian banks to follow the policy rates put forward by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

If this cannot be done by Mr Swan in the next 24 hours, opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey declared on Thursday that the parliament will do the job for him as he warned that an initiative from the Coalition would prod the country's lawmakers to put the banks into line with RBA's cash rates.

According to Mr Hockey, Australian banks were practically intimidating the government by ignoring the warnings issued by the federal treasurer to follow the interest rates decided upon by the central bank.

He warned the country's banks to stop its practice of treating government policies with contempt lest the Parliament would be forced exercise its powers, including punitive measures, to effectively call their elusive attention.

Although Mr Hockey did not specify the punitive actions that the parliament can resort to, he stressed that the Coalition would not sit idly as banks continue to ignore government policies.

He added that banks would not be able to justify their actions in light of the recently released RBA minutes which ran counter to their claim that higher costs were pushing them to implement higher interest rates despite the pause implemented by the central bank.

However, Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull appeared to be lukewarm on the idea of dragging the parliament into intervening with the country's financial policy issues.

When asked for comments on the initiative being pushed by his fellow Liberal lawmaker, Mr Turnbull simply stated that he was not aware "of any precedent for the Federal Parliament regulating interest rates at least in recent years."