Thursday, 7 April 2022

Banking services

Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh) (10:03): I rise today to express enormous concern on behalf of my community of Carnegie and Murrumbeena at the announcement by the Commonwealth Bank that it will close the last remaining bank branch in Carnegie. That will leave the entire Carnegie shopping strip and the Carnegie community with not one bank, so that is 250 businesses and thousands of residents with not one bank. There is a community bank in Murrumbeena, which is fantastic, but no bank in Carnegie.

My view is that while banking is a private business, it is also an essential service, and we regulate other essential services like telecommunications. Telstra is a private company, yet the government in Canberra makes laws around what Telstra can and cannot do—untimed local calls, free emergency number calls. The federal government needs to do more to keep banks relevant to the community for older people and for shopkeepers who need to take their takings to a bank. You cannot do everything at an Australia Post office, and even if you could do everything, they do not have the relevant security arrangements. Banks need to do better. Over 100 banks have closed in Victoria since January 2020—just over two years—and over 400 in the rest of the country. At this rate there will be no bank branches left in five years if they keep closing 50 a year. It is not good enough. It is not just the Commonwealth Bank; every bank needs to do better, and the federal government has to do better.