PRESS RELEASE: Citizens Party in Canberra this week to demand Albanese government respond to Senate inquiry report on bank branch closures, as Bendigo Bank devastates Queenstown and nine other communities around Australia

Citizens Party leader Robert Barwick and Dr Andy Schmulow will be in Canberra this week to advocate for Queenstown in Tasmania and nine other towns where Bendigo Bank is closing branches.

Bendigo Bank’s Queenstown branch is the last bank in town, and it’s also the last bank on the entire west coast of Tasmania.

Five of the ten branches Bendigo Bank is closing are the last banks in town.

In May 2024, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee released the report of its inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia, which observed, “When banks close their branches in regional areas, the impact on individuals and communities can be devastating and far-reaching, especially when it is the last bank in town.”

Robert Barwick, representing the Citizens Party, attended all 13 public hearings of that inquiry, and testified at the 1 December 2023 Canberra hearing on the Citizens Party’s solution of a public post office bank to guarantee financial services and cash for all communities, and force the big banks to compete on service.

Dr Andy Schmulow, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong, testified to the Kingston, SA hearing of the inquiry, and his recommendations were included in the final report.
The Citizen Party is demanding the Albanese-Chalmers government respond to the report, which is now 14 months old, and which, so far, the government has ignored.

Barwick said Albanese and Chalmers are responsible for the latest bank closures by Bendigo Bank, because they have ignored the report.
“The government of the day isn’t required to implement the recommendations of a Senate inquiry”, Barwick said, “but it is obliged by law to respond within 90 days.
“Instead, Albanese and Chalmers have ignored it.

“They have sent the message to Bendigo Bank that they will get away with pulling the rug out from under these communities they are abandoning, including Queenstown.”
Barwick and Schmulow will be telling politicians in Canberra not to be fooled by the three-year moratorium on regional branch closures to which the Big Four have all committed.
“This is not reform”, Barwick said. “This is the banks fooling the government into accepting a platitude in place of real action.

“The banks only agreed to the moratorium after they closed all the branches they wanted to—for now.

“Bendigo Bank is advertising that it wants to be included in the big bank club—supposedly ‘the better big bank’—so it seems to be going on a branch closure spree before it commits to the moratorium as a PR stunt.
“Meanwhile, the people of Queenstown will have to drive two and a half hours over icy mountain roads to visit the next closest bank in Burnie, and the entire west coast of Tasmania will be left without a bank.”
Barwick noted that he has spoken to locals in Queenstown, who report the closure will cause all the same problems as every town that testified to the Senate inquiry experienced.
The testimony of those towns proved the banks were lying when they claimed their customers didn’t use branches and preferred to bank online.

This is why the Senators on the inquiry, representing all parties, came up with such a hard-hitting report, he said, including that the government should: designate access to banking services and cash to be an essential service; commission an expert panel to investigate the feasibility of establishing a public bank, including on the postal bank model; and make the banking code of practice mandatory.

“The inquiry cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars”, Barwick said. “The government should not ignore it.”