Join Cash Out Tuesday to tellbankers like Matt Comyn ‘hands off our cash!’
Today isCash Out Tuesday, when Aussies are urged to withdraw some cash from a bank, ATMor EFTPOS retailer to send a message to bankers that we don’t want theircashless economy.
AustralianCitizens Party Research Director Robert Barwick, who has participated in everyhearing of the Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia which isexposing the banks’ cashless agenda, said today:
“That’swhat the cashless economy is—the bankers’ fantasy to expand their profits andcontrol, regardless of the consequences in the real world of unreliable powerand communications infrastructure.”
The latestbanker to show his hand is CBA CEO Matt Comyn, who last week called for a banon cash transactions over $500 to supposedly help to curb the shadow economy.
Barwickexclaimed: “What a load of rubbish!”
Heexplained Comyn and his fellow bankers don’t care about the shadow economy;they really want more profits from:
- Skimming their cut of every transaction;
- Collecting and monetising all of our transaction data;
- Reducing or even eliminating the cost of cash transportation and bank branches;
- Increasing the payments they receive from the Reserve Bank as interest on their exchange settlement accounts (the less cash is in circulation, the larger is the banks’ balances in their exchange settlement accounts, on which the RBA pays them the “cash rate”, i.e. currently 4.35 per cent—with more than $100 billion in Australian banknotes currently in circulation, instead of existing as balances in exchange settlement accounts, the banks are missing out on around $5 billion in extra annual interest payments from the RBA).
“Thebanks’ shameless greed for maximising profit is what’s driving their cashlessagenda”, Barwick said, “not some faux civic-minded concern about the shadoweconomy.
“As theSenate inquiry has proved, Australia’s Big Four banks are not civic-minded atall. They don’t give a stuff about the towns they are crushing all overAustralia by closing branches and ripping out ATMs.
“Theydon’t give a stuff about the elderly customers whom they are forcing out of thecertainty and security of branch banking and into the terrifying world ofonline banking where they know they are the favourite targets of the mostsophisticated scammers in the world.
“And asfor Matt Comyn’s shadow economy excuse—he is the cause of the shadow economy!
“Byaggressively closing bank branches in regional Australia, the banks have madeit very difficult for businesses to safely deposit their cash takings, so morecash stays in informal circulation, where it can’t be measured and increasessecurity risks.
“But aspower and internet infrastructure is unreliable, those communities have nochoice—they need cash!” Barwick observed that Comyn must not have been payingattention in 2019-20 when the Morrison government tried to ban cashtransactions over $10,000, but an enormous backlash among the population forcedthe government to drop it.
“IfAussies weren’t going to cop a $10,000 cash ban, you can be sure they aren’tgoing to cop a $500 ban”, he said.
“TheSenate hearings into that $10,000 cash ban showed, thanks to the brilliantquestioning by the late Labor Senator Alex Gallacher, that the government hadzero evidence a cash limit would curb the shadow economy.
“In fact,the evidence from Europe showed that cash limits did nothing to reduce theshadow economy.
“It wasthen, and is now, a naked attempt by the banks to trap people in electronicbanking where they can be fleeced and controlled.
“We urgeAussies to join Cash Out Tuesday today to tell Matt Comyn and the other bankers‘hands off our cash’.”
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