PRESS RELEASE: Treasurer Jim Chalmers finally takes on the banks … but with a feather duster

The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) welcomes Treasurer Jim Chalmers finally taking steps to address the problem of bank closures, lack of access to cash, and cashless businesses.
ACP Research Director Robert Barwick said: “This is a testament to the power of the recent Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia, which exposed the banks’ lies and proved they hold their customers in contempt.
“It has made the government realise it must take action.
“However, while the measures Chalmers has announced to address bank closures and cash lean in the right direction, they are weak and should go further.
“Chalmers will not fix these problems if his solutions are developed so as not to offend Anna Bligh’s Australian Banking Association (ABA).”
Bank levy
According to the 15 November Australian Financial Review, Chalmers has notified the banks of a proposed regional services bank levy, by which banks that have fewer regional branches relative to their deposits would subsidise banks that have more branches, to help keep those branches open.
An AFR source said the levy could cost the banks “tens of millions” of dollars each—a fraction of the billions banks have saved by closing thousands of branches.
It’s a weak version of the Senate inquiry’s recommendation to increase the existing bank levy on the Big Four banks by 10 per cent to help bankless communities establish community banks, and increase investment in Bank@Post, which the major banks are under-funding.
Cash mandate
On 18 November, Jim Chalmer and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones announced a policy that would require businesses which sell essential goods like food and fuel to accept cash as payment.
Small businesses would be exempt from the mandate.
The policy is a pale imitation of a bill introduced in June this year by Independent MPs Andrew Gee and Bob Katter, Keeping Cash Transactions in Australia Bill 2024, which would require all businesses to accept cash, with only specific exemptions.
The Gee-Katter bill is premised on cash being legal tender, and therefore it should be accepted by default, and the banks should not be allowed to get away with reducing its use, as they have been doing.
Robert Barwick said: “The good news is that Chalmers’ announcement would put a floor under cash use in Australia, so the banks’ fantasy of eradicating cash completely would be stymied.
“This is a victory for Australians who’ve been fighting against the banks’ war on cash.
“But it doesn’t go far enough.
“My question for Chalmers and Jones is why are they releasing these proposals that fiddle at the edges, instead of responding to the Senate inquiry’s report, which the government is required to do within 90 days?
“Senator Gerard Rennick, who instigated the inquiry, won Senate support in the last sitting for a motion requiring the government to respond.
“Why are they ignoring it?
The ACP is challenging the government to respond to the recommendations to:
• declare banking and access to cash an essential service;
• establish an expert panel on a public/postal bank; and
• make the Banking Code of Practice mandatory instead of voluntary.
“These are the big recommendations that would require the government to really take on the banks”, Barwick said.
“But the government is silent on them so far.
“It’s great to see that the efforts of the Senate inquiry and the ACP and others have pushed the government to start to address these issues, but Australians don’t want bandaids.
“They want a government that will be prepared to muscle up to the banks to force the banking system to actually serve the people, through proper services and supplying cash.”