Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak about the disconnect between corporate Australia and the people that they serve. I thank my good friend the member for Riverina for foreshadowing that in his contribution. I reinforce what he said about bank closures.

I'd like to first take issue with the ANZ bank. The ANZ bank last year withdrew finance or refused to finance the Port of Newcastle because it is a port that exports coal. Despite the fact that the Port of Newcastle authority has no coal assets, ANZ, in their virtue, decided not to finance them. What they failed to realise is that the majority of the grain that's grown in my electorate in northern New South Wales, that is exported to countries all over the world and pays our bills, go through the Port of Newcastle. So while the banks out there trying to sign up farmers as customers, they're undermining their supply chains by not financing the Port of Newcastle.

The CEO of the National Australia Bank, in virtue, decided to work on Australia Day in support of Aboriginal people in Australia. They weren't so thoughtful when they shut the Wee Waa branch. The people in that town who are most disadvantaged are the elderly Aboriginal people who are not au fait with online banking.

The Telstra CEO decided to work on Australia Day to show her virtue and support for Aboriginal people, but where was Telstra during the pandemic when the kids at Wilcannia had to work remotely and didn't have an internet connection to enable them to do that? It put them at an extreme disadvantage to people in other towns. Where were they then? I don't have an issue with the people on the ground. On Australia Day, as I was driving across my electorate, I saw a Telstra technician working on an exchange. I'm sure he was doing that to do his job and make sure people had communication and not signalling his virtue while he was doing it.

Westpac closed down one of its oldest and most respected branches in Moree, the home of the most productive agricultural shire in Australia. It's also a town that has a very high Aboriginal population. They closed down this branch where three of its 10 first customers in 1878 are continuous. Families have been there for 150 or 160 years, and now their biggest client would pay the cost for the whole branch. They closed it down, some bean counter, off somewhere else, Moree, a community of 15,000, on the Inland Rail, getting a special activation precinct, on the verge of a boom, getting a signal that corporate Australia doesn't see any future for.

This virtue signalling in support of Aboriginal people, I want to give a shout-out to my electorate staff in my three officers. They support and work for Aboriginal people every day of the week. I've heard some comments in this place that I find are quite offensive to the people I represent. I represent, after the Northern Territory, the highest percentage of Aboriginal people in any electorate in this country. I've been working with them for 15 years. These people are working out there as health professionals, in education, and as CEOs of local government.

A large number of my shire councillors are Aboriginal. They're building roads; they're running cultural centres. We've got young Aboriginal men instructing boys at the Quantum Foundation. I could go on and on. Good, solid citizens and part of the community. Some of the comments here, where people are speaking in slow voices and espousing their virtue and their care for these people with clearly no understanding of the integrity and the ability and the desire for these people to drive their own communities. My people have had enough of this. They're getting on with the job. They don't need the sympathy and the virtue of corporate Australia; they just want the support to do what they're doing.

See this speech in context