PRESS RELEASE: Citizens Party in Parliament to demand action on Queenstown and the other towns being abandoned by Bendigo Bank
Citizens Party Chairman Robert Barwick is leading a party delegation to Canberra today to urge the Albanese-Chalmers government to finally respond to the Senate report on bank closures in regional Australia.
Barwick, Associate Professor of Law Dr Andy Schmulow, and Citizens Party Executive Member Glen Isherwood will also demand government intervention to stop Bendigo Bank’s CEO Richard Fennell from closing the last bank on Tasmania’s west coast in Queenstown, and the 21 other branches and agencies that are the last banks in their towns.
“The Senate report noted that bank closures are especially devastating for communities if it is the last bank in a town”, Barwick said.
“Under Richard Fennell as head of retail and now CEO, Bendigo Bank has closed more last banks in towns since 2020 than the Big Four banks combined.
“The Big Four have agreed to a three-year moratorium on bank closures, but because the government has effectively ignored the Senate report, Fennell thinks he can get away with his mass-abandonment agenda.”
The west coast of Tasmania is a very productive industrial economy, with exports from diversified mining, agriculture, aquaculture, and forestry earning the Australian economy more than $2 billion a year in foreign exchange.
Now, the around 20 towns in the region based on those industries will lose access to a regional bank on 26 September when the branch is closed, even though the lease on the premises doesn’t run out until 30 June next year.
“Under Richard Fennell’s brave new world of Bendigo Bank throwing off its community bank roots and identifying as a ‘big bank’, he would rather pay rent on an empty building than serve the people of Queenstown and the west coast”, Barwick observed.
“And he’s probably never been there.”
The Citizens Party’s message to politicians is that the 2023-24 Senate inquiry was one of the most effective and successful inquiries ever by Parliament.
The Senators involved learned the truth from hundreds of witnesses who testified at the 13 hearings held around Australia, that face-to-face banking and access to cash is essential to their communities.
The Senators produced a powerful, bipartisan report that recommended the government:
* designate banking services and access to cash as an essential service;
* commission an expert panel to investigate the feasibility of establishing a government bank, including one that operates in post offices; and
* make the Banking Code of Conduct mandatory not voluntary.
It is therefore unacceptable that the government can simply ignore such an effective inquiry, and by doing so give Richard Fennell the green light to close the most last genuine banking services in one go since branch closures began in the 1990s.
“Albanese and Chalmers must immediately intervene in this calamity and tell Richard Fennell this is unacceptable and make him back off”, Barwick said.
“A banking service in Queenstown is far more important than his bonus.”
The Australian Citizens Party is an independent, federally-registered political party, founded in 1988. It is committed to policies that promote the economic development of Australia for the benefit of all its people, not just the vested corporate interests which have too much influence over the major political parties. It takes its inspiration from the "old Labor" party stalwarts including King O'Malley, who fought to establish Australia's national bank, the Commonwealth Bank, and John Curtin and Ben Chifley, who used the Commonwealth Bank to lead the economic mobilisation that saved Australia in WWII. The ACP fought against the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank, which has concentrated financial power in Australia in the Big Four banking oligopoly that gouges short-term profits at the expence of Australians and the nation's economic development, and is campaigning to re-establish a national bank, modelled on the old Commonwealth Bank, as a government post office bank which would guarantee face-to-face banking services, and access to cash, for all communities, and break the Big Four banking oligopoly.
