Tuesday, 15 October 2019

Government banking

TO THE HONOURABLE THE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL ASSEMBLED IN PARLIAMENT

We, the undersigned Citizens of Victoria, call on the Legislative Council of Victoria to note:

1.   Community banks have a proud history of supporting local businesses, providing vital and valued access to local banking services where major banks have withdrawn services and providing generous and ongoing grants to deserving local community organisations; and

2.   Daniel Andrews and Labor have embarked on an extraordinary and damaging policy to centralise the deposits of all State Government instrumentalities, government schools, public hospitals, cemetery trusts and others at the Sydney-based Westpac Banking Corporation. This will be very damaging to local communities and represent a body blow the central community role of many community banks, both in country Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne.

We therefore call upon the Andrews Labor Government to urgently rethink this retrograde policy and to reverse its plan.