PRESS RELEASE: Jim Chalmers needs to intervene following revelations Bendigo Bank’s mining town blacklist

The revelation from The Regional’s Dale Webster that Bendigo Bank has secretly blacklisted mining towns, denying loans to residents because their towns are associated with mining activities, demands immediate government intervention, the Citizens Party says.

Residents of towns where Bendigo Bank is currently closing branches and agencies are devastated that their economic fate is in the hands of bank executives who are holding themselves up as moral arbiters.
On 22 September Sky News Australia interviewed Ian Robertson, general manager of West Coast regional Railway in Queenstown, Tasmania, where this week Bendigo Bank is closing the last branch on Tasmania’s West Coast. Robertson called the blacklist “morally corrupt”.

The Mayor of Queenstown’s West Coast Council, Shane Pitt, whom Bendigo Bank knocked back for a loan, said in a September 18 statement:
“For years the local community, including the West Coast Council, has faithfully supported the Bendigo Bank with their banking, as they have maintained the only working bank branch on the West Coast … To now find out that the Bendigo Bank has apparently been automatically rejecting loan proposals in our region on the basis that we are a largely mining community is a real slap in the face.”
Citizens Party Chairman Robert Barwick says a mining town blacklist was an economic death sentence to many productive towns around Australia, on top of the carnage already caused by bank branch closures.
“Why is the government allowing this?” he demanded.

“The banks are subsidised by the taxpayers in these towns; they should not be allowed to deny vital banking services.
“Treasurer Jim Chalmers must intervene to stop this policy.”

Says Barwick, “Bendigo Bank’s blacklist is part of the broader crisis in regional banking services.
“The crisis forced Parliament to conduct a major bipartisan inquiry in 2023-24, which aired all the issues and handed down powerful recommendations in its final report.”
The report stated: ‘Without regulatory intervention, banks will continue to close branches and communities will pay the price.’
After spending around half a million dollars on this inquiry and producing this bipartisan report, the government has done nothing.
“Bendigo Bank continues to close branches and communities like Queenstown are paying the price, Barwick says.”
Barwick noted the only genuinely motivated solutions on the table are the Regional Banking Investment Alliance (RBIA) proposal for a levy on the big banks to fund mutual banks establishing regional branches, and the Citizens Party’s policy of a government post office bank.

The RBIA represents 21 regional mutual banks that prioritise customer service and, unlike the big banks, are committed to maintaining branches.
They are asking for a levy from the big banks of $153 million, a tiny fraction of the big banks’ combined $30 billion plus in net profits, which would subsidise up to 5,000 staff in mutual banks, allowing them to maintain and open around 1,000 branches.

The Citizens Party is proposing a government post office bank that would replace the limited Bank@Post service with full banking services accessible across more than 4,000 post offices, the largest retail network in Australia.

It would force the private banks to compete on service, as Kiwibank did in New Zealand when it started as a government post office bank in 2002; private banks responded by closing no branches for the next seven years.

The Senate report recommended an expert panel examine the government bank proposal.
“There’s no solution to the crisis banks are forcing on regional communities without government intervention”, Barwick says. “To start with, the government must respond to the Senate report.”