- Regional Australian communities face drives of up to 540 kilometres to access banking services following widespread bank branch closures
- Rising fuel prices and shortages are exacerbating the crisis, with some towns like Robinvale running out of fuel entirely
- The Citizens Party is urging the Albanese government to implement recommendations from the Canavan report on regional bank closures
- The party proposes establishing a government bank operating through Australia's 4,000+ post offices to ensure face-to-face banking services
- Senator Matt Canavan is being called upon to use his position as Nationals leader to pressure the government into acting on his report's recommendations
The Citizens Party is warning that one of the impacts of soaring fuel prices and fuel shortages will be on the residents of towns left with no bank, who have to drive hundreds of kilometres just to do their banking.
The party is challenging the Albanese government to immediately respond to the Canavan report on bank closures in regional Australia, which it has ignored for two years, and start to implement its recommendations that will address this crisis.
“A serious crisis in regional Australia is turning into a dire emergency”, Citizens Party National Chairman Robert Barwick says.
Barwick was the only person to attend all 13 hearings of the 2023-24 Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia, and he testified on the party’s solution of establishing a new government bank that would operate in Australia’s 4,000 plus post offices, to ensure face-to-face banking services for all communities.
He personally heard the testimony of witnesses from regional towns all across Australia, from Tasmania to North Queensland to WA’s wheat belt to the Pilbara, who described the hardship of having to travel hundreds of kilometres and many hours to the next available bank, just because bank executives decided they could make a bigger profit and bigger bonuses by closing their branches.
Coober Pedy residents face a 540-kilometre drive to the next bank in Port Augusta, while Carnamah residents in WA now have a 240-kilometre drive, or two-day bus trip, to visit a bank. Residents of Queenstown in Tasmania have to drive 2.5 hours over tightly winding roads to Burnie. Tom Price residents in the Pilbara have a 400-kilometre trek. And on and on around Australia.
“Having to drive these distances just to access an essential service like banking was already a crisis for these towns, but now the fuel crisis will cut many people off altogether”, Barwick warns.
It has already happened in Robinvale in Victoria, near Mildura, where ANZ closed its branch in 2023, leaving the locals with a 200-kilometre trip for a bank.
This week Robinvale ran out of fuel, so nobody is making that trip.
“Australians are victims of decades of politicians and corporate executives putting short-term profits above the long-term needs of the people and the real economy”, Barwick says.
“Successive governments ignored the IEA requirement to hold a 90-day stockpile of fuel, not wanting to pay for it themselves and not wanting to make private companies pay for it.
“Look where that’s got us now.
“And successive governments allowed banks to close thousands of branches across Australia and regional Australia, so now entire towns risk being cut off from essential banking services, without which nobody can exist in the modern economy.”
The Citizens Party insist the solutions recommended in Senator Matt Canavan’s report will work, and is challenging the government to implement them with urgency.
The Party is also challenging Senator Canavan to use his new position as Nationals leader to champion his own recommendations, which would put pressure on the government to act.
Barwick says, “Matt Canavan chaired the inquiry brilliantly, and went from giving the banks the benefit of the doubt that they were making legitimate commercial decisions, at the start of the inquiry, to tearing strips off them by the end, for their callous disregard of their social license and the communities they were abandoning.
“He acknowledges it was the most successful inquiry he’s ever been part of, but it’s unfinished business.
“He needs to bring that fire to his leadership and direct it at the government to force action that communities desperately need.”
About us:
The Citizens Party is a federally registered political party founded in 1988. It campaigns for economic and national sovereignty, by which it means making the government accountable to the people of Australia, instead of being beholden to vested corporate interests on economic policy, and submissive to foreign governments on foreign policy. Although the Citizens Party has not had any candidates elected to Parliament, it has achieved many parliamentary inquiries and collaborated with sitting politicians to introduce a number of bills, all related to banking issues. The party achieved the Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia, participated in every hearing, and testified on its policy of a government post office bank as the solution to regional bank closures, which was reflected in the final report.
Contact details:
Robert Barwick
Chairman and spokesman
0409 014 265