"It is an easy target for those worried about global growth, Chinese demand and falling commodity prices.''
The concern was often expressed in terms of anxiety about loan exposures to the mining and energy sector, he said in a note to clients.
The perception was Australian banks must get caught in the crunch as iron ore, oil and gas prices tumbled.
It was the same disturbing rumble that, from time to time, hit the Australian dollar and equity markets more broadly, Mr Bascand said.
"The fact is systemic Australian bank, and individual bank, exposures to the mining, oil and gas sectors are small in terms of overall loan books.''
Australian banks had to disclose their risk weighted assets by sector.
Their latest quarterly reports were thoroughly examined by analysts.
Capital requirements of Australian banks had been in the limelight over the past year as banks had raised equity to meet new global and Apra (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority guidelines, he said.
On many gauges, Australian banks were the best capitalised in the world among the group of systemically important banks.
Asset quality and bank capital had been a more general focus and investors were increasingly aware of economic and sector risks through better disclosure.
More poignant in the last few months had been questions regarding potential future loan book quality in exposures to mining and the oil gas sectors.
The large four Australian banks - ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac - had in aggregate $A65billion ($NZ69.2billion), or 1.6%, of their loan books exposed to mining and oil and gas.
Specific "in the news'' Australian loan exposures to miners such as Gindalbie Metals, Atlas Iron and Fortescue were more limited than widely expected.
The US high-yield market and syndicated global bank books provided most of the facilities, Mr Bascand said.
Similarly, Australian oil and gas producers had global bank facilities.
The Australian banks had some oil and gas trade receivable exposures and ANZ and CBA were reported as providing a $A250million facility for PNG oil and gas producer Oil Search.
Banks also disclosed their sector exposures at default and non-performing loans, together with provisions against those loans.
Those disclosures were more difficult to compare but CBA had $A183million of impaired resources exposure with provisions of $A79million.
NAB said it had less than 1% impaired resource sector exposures with $A24million of provisions.
While ANZ had $A185 million of impaired exposures, it was still less than 1% of the total resource sector loan book, he said.
"With these exposures, it will take a large pick-up in default rates to impact on either profits or capital exposures.''
Even with a 20-times rise in resource sector impairments to a 20% level, and assuming only half the loans are recoverable, the overall sector exposure would amount to just 0.16% of bank capital.
"In our opinion, the systemic risks to the Australian banking system from falling commodity prices and Chinese equity market volatility are potentially over-emphasised by many investors.''
Housing remained the largest exposure for Australian banks.
Impairments on the banking sector's core housing credit exposures seemed likely to stay low, mainly because employment growth was accelerating.
A potential drought was one risk not being well documented.
