PRESS RELEASE: Digital disruption proves cash is king (and Australia needs a public postal bank)
Everyone should be furious that cybersecurity company CrowdStrike’s incompetence crashed digital systems worldwide last Friday, because it exposed that too many companies and governments have made us vulnerable by madly embracing digital technology with no thought to keeping basic manual redundancies in case of disruption.
The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) says the lesson from the event is that the ultimate manual redundancy in case of system failure is cash.
“Cash is king”, ACP Research Director Robert Barwick declared today, “but the banks have been working very hard to overthrow the king.
“In 2019 the Morrison government tried to do the banks’ dirty work for them by banning cash transactions over $10,000, but was forced to back off by an enormous public backlash.
“Yet since then, the banks themselves have tried to force us to go cashless by taking away access to cash—closing thousands of branches and ripping out tens of thousands of ATMs.
“The banks want every single transaction to go through their computers, so they can take a cut of literally everything, and spy on everything we do so they can monetise our data.
“This outage should anger every Australian, because it should never have been this disruptive.
“Technology is great, but there’s no universe in which it can never be disrupted. Yet the banks and other corporations have deliberately forced people into complete digital dependence without caring about the consequences.
“The banks have set us up for disaster—they have plunged us into a digital dystopia.”
No more cashless businesses
The ACP is calling on all Australians to demand Parliament pass Independent MPs Andrew Gee and Bob Katter’s Keeping Cash Transactions in Australia Bill 2024, which will make it unlawful for businesses not to accept cash payments (up to $10,000 and with some reasonable exceptions).
“We’ve been conned by the banks to accept cashless businesses, and this is a wake-up call”, Robert Barwick said.
“There should be no more cashless businesses, full stop.
“Cash is not only legal tender, it is the most reliable medium for transacting under all conditions, including natural disasters, power failures and digital outages.
“Almost 188,000 Australians have signed Jason Bryce’s Change.org petition for ‘A Cash and Banking Guarantee’, and it’s time the government delivered.”
Public postal bank
Barwick explained that the one problem with requiring businesses to accept cash payments is they need to be able to bank their cash, which the banks have made very difficult by closing so many branches.
Australia Post is also making it difficult, by closing so many post offices.
Small businesses now have to travel much further to make basic deposits and withdrawals essential to running a business.
Barwick noted that the recent Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia had castigated the banks for closing so many branches, and had recommended the government appoint an expert panel to investigate establishing a public bank, including the model of a public bank that operates in post offices.
“A public post office bank is the solution that the Australian people should demand”, Barwick said.
“There are 4,271 post offices in Australia—more than all bank branches combined—and every one could be a branch of a new government bank that guarantees face-to-face banking services and access to cash.
“The competition will force the Big Four banks to lift their game and start serving their customers properly.
“And the revenue from banking will fund the postal network and stop Australia Post closing post offices.
“It’s a win-win solution that Friday’s digital outage proves is necessary.”
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.
