Banks Keep Closing. The Government Does Nothing | ABC Radio Perth 102.5 FM

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]80s 10 after 3, Lynn in Gosnells says, "Ollie, there have not been any banks in Gosnells for many years. The P&N bank branch closed in Maddington and now is only at Carousel. It is very difficult for seniors." says Lynn in Gosnells. 1300 22 1025.

[00:00:22]Have you also lost your local bank branch and how far do you now have to travel to do basic banking? Have you been forced online whether you like it or not?

[00:00:33]Or maybe you think, "Ollie, this is just the reality of modern banking."

[00:00:37]Maybe you've already made made the move digital. Do you think banking should be treated as essential service? 1300 22 1025. Because it's now been 2 years since that major Senate inquiry handed down recommendations into bank closures and it included calls to treat banking as an essential service and even investigate a government-owned postal bank. And critics, they say the federal government has done little with that report, while branches right across the country, particularly in regional areas, continue disappearing from towns. Robert Barwick is from the Australian Citizens Party and he says communities are being abandoned. The delay is giving the banks a green light to keep shutting doors. He joins me live on Drive. Good day, Robert.

[00:01:22]Good day, Ollie. How are you? I'm good there, Robert. For people who haven't followed this closely like you and I have, just a reminder, what did the Senate inquiry actually recommend and why was it significant?

[00:01:36]Well, it was the product of a major inquiry. I participated in every single hearing. It went It went longer than originally scheduled because of the demand was so great that um towns all around Australia were lobbying for the inquiry to hold hearings in their towns.

[00:01:54]And what the what the inquiry was I to to achieve is to show the senators that they'd been lied to. Because the narr- before the inquiry, the narrative of the banks was um they were just responding to the demand of their customers to not use branches. That they they preferred to bank online. That's what Anna Bligh and the Banking Association was out there spinning um was the reality. And so that was the justification for closing branches.

[00:02:24]Not um I must point out, Ollie, not that the branches weren't profitable. They weren't claiming that. They were claiming no, no, the customers prefer to bank online. So um there was enough backlash that the Senate uh conducted an inquiry.

[00:02:41]And what the senators heard in town after town after town around Australia was the opposite. That they were devastated by losing their bank branches. They were extremely inconvenienced by having um less availability of cash, by having to travel vast distances to do bank basic banking services.

[00:03:03]The closure of the branch, Ollie, did not reduce the demand for the branch. It just meant the customers had to travel further.

[00:03:11]That's all that That's all the banks were achieving by doing this. And so the senators heard that repeated in town after town after town.

[00:03:18]And um they wrote a report accordingly.

[00:03:21]Senator Matt Canavan um chaired the inquiry, but it was a bipartisan inquiry. You had Labor on there, Greens, Nationals, Liberals, uh Senator Gerard Rennick, the Liberal Senator from Queensland actually was instrumental in getting the inquiry up. And that's what they heard. And so they recommended There was eight major There was eight recommendations, but the the three big ones are uh the most significant. One, designate access to banking services and cash as an essential service.

[00:03:49]>> Mhm.

[00:03:50]And now that is a legal obligation that by by doing so, you put a legal obligation on both the banks and on the government. Right? The government declares something an essential service, it has a role in providing it, making sure it's there.

[00:04:02]That was the first one. The second one was investigate establish an expert panel to investigate the feasibility of a public bank, including one that could operate through post offices to actually get more competition for service in the system. And the third one was make the code of practice that banks supposedly hold to, make it mandatory instead of what is essentially a voluntary code of practice. They would have made a huge difference if the if the government implemented them. Well, the banks argue that more people are now banking online, that branches simply aren't commercially viable anymore. Do you reject that argument, Robert?

[00:04:40]Well, uh in the very first hearing was held in Sale in Victoria.

[00:04:45]And the first bank up um to be questioned by the senators was Westpac.

[00:04:51]And you had some senators on the uh committee actually, Ollie, who had worked in banks. Senator Rennick was one of them.

[00:04:59]Senator Wish-Wilson from the Greens, the Tasmanian senator, had worked in banks.

[00:05:03]So, they knew the right questions to ask, and Westpac admitted that it had nothing to do with commercial viability.

[00:05:09]It had nothing to do with the with these the particular branches not making money. They were They were using different criteria to close the branch. And essentially, what they were saying was, "No, there's not enough use of the branch." And they would cite these statistics that claimed that. However, we looked closely at the statistics, and uh they seemed very dodgy, including the fact that what the banks never owned up to was they had already started the decline of the service by closing at a different odd hours, making it less conveniently available for the customers, etc., right? And so those those adjustments to the timetable of the bank being open affected the statistics.

[00:05:57]And if they hadn't have done that, if they had have provided a proper service, then um these the the people in these towns, they turned up to to the hearings for a reason, Ollie. They needed to use a bank and they were denying they were contradicting the bank's narrative.

[00:06:13]Robert Barwick is with us from the Australian Citizens Party. Have you lost your local bank branch? And how far are you now having to travel to do your basic banking? Have you been forced online whether you like it or not? Give me a call 1300221025.

[00:06:27]Or do you think this is simply the reality of modern banking? Customers may have already moved digital. Do you think banking should be treated as an essential service? 1300221025 at 16 past 3. You're on Drive with Oliver Peterson. Uh Robert, let me just ask you about what you've heard since that inquiry.

[00:06:46]Because what are you hearing from regional and out of suburban communities in particular about the real-world impacts of these bank branch closures?

[00:06:57]>> [snorts] >> I And I don't even think it's really you have to go that far out of suburban, to be honest. Um if if you're an elderly person or or a disabled person in a in any kind of suburb and you lose your local bank and you even if you have to travel to the next suburb, that can be an enormous inconvenience right there.

[00:07:15]If you if you're relying on public transport, uh etc. It One of the things that became quite evident as this inquiry was going along is that the the the Senate should have actually conducted it into bank closures everywhere, not just in regional Australia.

[00:07:29]Um because there's been enormous numbers of closures in in the cities in the major cities and they you know, while you're not left with 200 km round trips like like a a of the country towns are or in the case of poor Coober Pedy in South Australia, a 540 km one-way trip to the next bank. Um, uh, it's still quite a an enormous inconvenience for the customers in the cities.

[00:07:56]And and it's the and it's the it's the vulnerable customers who are the most inconvenienced, right? And as one as one banking expert pointed out to me, you know, um, it's really it's a real tragedy how the elderly get treated because in the case of these banks, they built their their brand and their their power and their wealth and their size on the backs of these customers who are now their elderly customers.

[00:08:19]And so they when they when those customers were younger, cuz a lot of bank loyalty in Australia, when those customers were younger, they were contributing to the the the viability of these banks that made them the big institutions they are, right? And now just because they're retired and they they're elderly, etc., the bank wants to turn around and say, "Oh, we don't owe them anything." Um, it's it's it's just a really harsh reality that, uh, ends up having an enormous knock-on effect wherever it actually happens.

[00:08:48]What we've seen in the 2 years since then is the, um, because this was only a regional inquiry, >> Yeah. the banks, um, played a little game. They signed up to, um, Jim Chalmers' uh, announcement of a 3-year moratorium on branch closures. Oh, we're not going to close any branches for 3 years.

[00:09:10]However, only they had there was two previous inquiries in the bank branch closures in Australia, one in 1999 and one in 2004.

[00:09:19]In both cases, at the end of each inquiry, the banks did exactly the same thing. They said, "Oh, we'll have a 3-year moratorium on branch closures."

[00:09:26]And when it was when it when the 3-year moratorium was up, they just went back to closing branches en masse. But in in this particular case of this this moratorium, the main thing the banks achieved is they seem to have got Jim Chalmers to think it was his idea.

[00:09:39]Right? But they they're just going through the motions.

[00:09:42]It only applies to regional banks, and even then they game it so that they'll say they'll they'll they'll use different definitions of region regional to still shut a regional on odd regional bank here or there because it's not a genuine commitment that they've made to serve their customers.

[00:09:57]Um and yeah, the they're just showing and the government what my concern is that the government has allowed them Mhm. to go through the motions, do this tokenistic stuff essentially, um that doesn't actually change anything materially for the for the the the bank consumers.

[00:10:17]And that's on the government. That's because of their lack of response to the Senate inquiry. The banks have been able to do that. Right. What Ben says is because their obligations now lie with the shareholders, Robert. And one of those recommendations out of the inquiry is to look at a government-owned postal bank operating through Australia Post. Would that be a solution? Is there appetite for that? How would it work?

[00:10:41]>> [snorts] >> Well, it is a it is a government bank again back in the system is definitely a big part of the solution, if not for the sole reason of adding extra competition. Because when when Ben talks about shareholders, um you got to understand of course of course businesses are responsible to their shareholders.

[00:11:00]But if there's proper competition in the sector, the way that they serve their shareholders is by getting the most customers. And the way they get the most customers is by providing the best service. Mhm.

[00:11:12]When you have a model which is an oligopoly like we have now with the big four banks, they don't have enough competition. So it's all about what they can recruit for their shareholders. And they're they're competing to provide less service to their customers.

[00:11:26]So you need to increase the competition in the system.

[00:11:30]Now, every time a small bank has come along or one of these um neo banks they call them or some of these digital banks, um there's a been a whole bunch of them start up in Australia in the last 10 or 15 years.

[00:11:42]Um if they've they've either fallen by the way or if they've succeeded, the big four one of the big four banks has bought them up. Right? They they they they have kept the competition in the banking system very low. The only entity that could actually go toe-to-toe with them would be the government. And our argument as the Citizens Party is that um Australia had public banks Well, we had a big public bank, the Commonwealth Bank, for 84 years from 1912 to 1996 when it was sold. We had state banks like Bank Bankwest is now started off as the Rural and Industries Bank. Right? That went right back into the 19th century.

[00:12:17]So, we've had 30 years in Australia of no public banks. We had well over a century of having public banks in the system. So, that's the normal. This is This has been like a 30-year experiment, which has been a disaster.

[00:12:33]Bring back a public bank and give it a retail function. So, we Our party has always advocated, "Well, look, the easiest way There's 2,500 original post offices. There's 4,000 post offices total. 4,000 post offices more than all bank branches in Australia combined. Set it up so that the retail side, access to your accounts, etc., is through the post office. So, um compensate the post offices properly um by the way, because that's one of the issues now. Post offices are starting to close around Australia, too.

[00:13:02]>> Yeah, they are.

[00:13:02]>> Um and this would actually be a win-win solution. But, it's you know, make post offices viable and have banking services for every community, cuz most communities have a post office.

[00:13:11]Um and it's full services also, not just what you have at Bank at Post now, which is just at Bank at Post is like an ATM with a with a teller. Right? Um a proper full-service bank. The local post office won't approve loans, um but you can make your application start your application there, right? And then someone from the the public bank will finalize all your paperwork and and and approve the loan for you. But a proper bank that actually makes the big four compete and compete on service where it matters. It doesn't have to make a big profit. It just has to provide a service. It will make a profit, Ollie.

[00:13:47]It's pretty hard for a bank to go under really.

[00:13:51]You know, banking is a pretty unique business. It will make a profit. It just doesn't have to make a record breaking profit like the big four banks try and do every year. Robert Barwick, thank you very much for your time from the Australian Citizens Party research director there. It's over to you.

[00:14:06]1300221025 has your bank branch closed? And look how far do you now need to go and do or to complete your banking?

[00:14:17]Authorized by Craig Isherwood, Citizens Party, Melbourne.