Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, the bit that I guess I am interested in is that the way in which it works tends to be fairly consistent. As you know, the Senate is doing a separate inquiry into these matters at the moment to do with credit cards, which kind of relates to this. The consistency seems to be that, if you are using a card at an institution other than the institution that has issued that card, there is a fee for withdrawal of money, as there is also a fee for checking your balances. That is across every card, and that is across every bank.

The concern, I think, in part is the huge discrepancy in what these fees are in different parts of Australia. If I am in the CBD of Sydney, I can find a bank that is not my bank—let us say I have a Commonwealth Bank card; I can go and find an ANZ ATM—that may have a fee associated, but it is only, say, $1.50. But, if I am in a rural or regional area or a remote Indigenous community, there are reports of up to $3.70 being charged for that same function. Some would argue that this is a discrepancy relating to a lack of competition in these more rural and regional kinds of areas.

The concern, Minister, would be that, if I am being charged a fee of $3.70, the simple act of, say, on two occasions checking to see how much money is in my account, plus one withdrawal, suddenly means an amount of $10, which may seem small to those of us earning close to $200,000 in this chamber, but somebody who is on Newstart, disability support or another type of pension would obviously see it as quite significant. The question would be: have the practicalities of the fees associated and what the fees will do been looked at and modelled, and has there been any discussion with the financial institutions for these trials on how we can minimise that?