Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise on this motion about retaining cash. I thank the member for Lalor for moving it because I think it's very important. The member made a very good point in her speech: the people who are most concerned about this are older Australians. They have grown up dealing with cash. It's been easy and reliable. What is not easy and reliable for many of them is technology. They don't have the iPhone that they tap on and they're not necessarily across the internet or on NetBank or some other application.

I get emails on this every single day. When I walk through the streets or, as I was on the weekend, at the Dorrigo Show, people raise this issue saying, 'Pat, we've got to make sure that we keep cash.' It's that fear factor for older Australians. Over 30 per cent of my electorate are over the age of 65. It is time we had that conversation and that we legislate that cash must be able to be used for essential items. I understand why you can't use cash to go and buy a brand-new Mercedes—because the first thing you think about is organised crime—but for essential items there's a very good reason behind using it. I'll give you three examples.

Firstly, I went to Coles recently and there had been a blackout. In that shopping centre, they have two ATMs. The ATMs didn't work because there was no electricity. The Coles scanners didn't work and there was a sign out the front saying, 'We accept cash only.' I didn't have any cash on me, so I got back in the car and went home. These things are going to happen; you're going to have weather events. In the horrible floods that we saw, everything went down and general supermarkets were saying, 'We only accept cash,' but you couldn't get the cash out. You couldn't use cash unless you had some at home. You have to have a backup plan.

I am really concerned about the banks. I say it all the time—I don't mean the people who work in the banks; I'm talking about the banking infrastructure or corporation itself—they are not our friends. I wish they'd stop trying to pretend they are our friends. They are money-making corporations and they will do what is necessary to increase their fees for their shareholders. Good on you, if you've got bank shareholdings in a self-managed super fund—that's great. But we need to look after the little people.

A recent example is of a pensioner in my electorate who went in with $160 in cash and wanted to deposit it over the counter. They wouldn't take it because of anti-money laundering legislation. This is a little old lady. She didn't look like me, with a handlebar moustache: a Chopper Read lookalike for Movember. They wouldn't take it, yet they said to her, 'There's a machine out the front that you put your cash in and put your card in, and that'll transfer it into your bank account.' She didn't know how. I made the point that these people behind the counters might find that they're going to lose their jobs because of automation. What that person should have done was get up, walk around the counter and say, 'Here you go; I'll show you how to do it.' The concept that we are going to lose cash in the future is beyond the pale. We have to ensure that we have cash in our society, as a backup, for essential services only, and to ensure that our older Australians are able to rely on that system that they have known for many, many years.

I'll make the final point in relation to anti-money-laundering. The concept that drug dealers and crime agencies deal only in cash is of the past. They're dealing in cryptocurrency now. So, the argument that we've got to get rid of cash to stop this is a falsehood. We have to look after our Australian citizens.

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