Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of this motion. It is a very important motion and has been a long time coming. We just heard the member for Riverina and previously the good member for northern Queensland talk about the importance of cash. It is important. Many people still use cash. Many of us are fine. We are fairly IT savvy and can do things quite easily on the computer, transfer money and pay bills et cetera, but the majority of Australians, especially the elderly and pensioners, still rely on cash. It is important that we have cash within our society, and it's important that people have access to cash to be able to go in and pay cash, as is their right, if they feel like it.

I think banks, for a number of years now, have been continuously making it harder and harder to either access cash, accept cash or pay with cash. They do so because it means less staff counting money and being tellers in branches, which therefore reduces their costs. If you have a look at the profits they make, we all know that they make billions and billions of dollars. Rightly so. They are businesses; they've got shareholders. But, at the same time, they have a responsibility to our society, they have a responsibility to our pensioners and they have a responsibility to people who perhaps, for whatever reason, don't have a smart phone or just want the right to pay in cash.

We've seen branches close. We've seen ATMs pulled out of walls, making them harder to find. My own bank, where I live, has closed three branches in the last 18 months. I'm finding it harder, when I actually have to go in to physically do something, to find a branch to go in and talk to.

The other day, I decided to go to the head office in King William Street in Adelaide, because I thought surely someone there would be able to assist with this issue that I had. I was told they couldn't, because they didn't have any tellers—just desks and service officers. It gives you an example of where banks are trying to take us and what the public wants.

Recently, I was contacted by a constituent of mine, Mary, whom I wrote to the Treasurer on behalf of to tell him about the importance of cash. I'm pleased that he has listened and is going down this track. Mary, who has a Bakers Delight in one of the biggest shopping centres in South Australia, informed me she deals with a lot of cash; people come in and buy a coffee and a sandwich, and a lot of pensioners use her coffee shop. Recently, she went to the bank to deposit the takings of the day and to take out the cash flow for the next day and was told she could not have any cash flow, because they have stopped that service.

She then had to ask around at the other banks within the same shopping centre, who all said: 'Yes, we'll give you cash, but you're not a client of this particular bank. You have to sign up with us.' You can imagine the rigmarole that would go with taking all her mortgages, all her payments and everything to a new bank. She then went back to her branch in the shopping centre and was informed there was a particular branch of the same bank seven kilometres away.

She now has to make that trip seven kilometres every day, back and forth, to access cash that she needs. It's not a luxury; it is vital to her business to be able to give out change. She was recently informed that that service stopped at well at this other shopping centre that she travels to, so she is now looking around to see where else she can access cash for her business, for the people that pay cash and need change. You can see how important it is.

Coincidentally, this morning, one of my staffers took his son and a friend of that son to a concert at the entertainment centre. They went to line up to get food during the concert and were told that only cards would be accepted—not cash. This kid was lucky that he was with a family friend who paid for it, and then they gave him the money. This was a young kid who turned up with cash from his parents to buy something to eat at this concert and was told, 'We can't accept it.' That's not on. We need to ensure that cash is available and remains as part of our society, and people should have a choice. We all have a choice. If you want to do it electronically, you can; if you want to pay cash, you can. Sure, doing it electronically makes our lives simpler in many cases, but the reality is that banks are shying away from their responsibilities to service the Australian public and to ensure they offer banking services.

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