Extract from The Guardian
With nearly 100 regional branches either closed or soon to close, getting to the bank is becoming increasingly difficult for Australians in remote areas.
That data shows that 62 have already closed, another 28 are slated to close before 30 June and the closure of eight more have been paused while a Senate inquiry takes place.
Shayne Stewart, who manages the Doon Doon roadhouse on the Great Northern Highway, about 100km from Kununurra, handles cash on a daily basis.
When the Westpac branch in Kununurra closed its doors in October 2022, Stewart started going to the post office to make deposits using the Bank@Post service. The lower deposit amount it limits him to has doubled the number of trips he needs to make into town.
“The trip takes a staff member away, and by the time you leave and get back, it’s a three-hour trip,” Stewart said. “So having to do that twice a week adds up. It’s expensive too, fuel’s not cheap up this way.”
The Commonwealth Bank, NAB and BankWest all continue to have physical branches in Kununurra, however, Stewart says it is a “good day when they’re open”. The Commonwealth branch is scheduled to be open four days a week from 9.30am-4pm, but residents say it is often closed during these times.
The BankWest and NAB branches are listed as “closed until further notice” and as “temporarily closed” on their respective websites.
“They might advertise their opening hours, but they don’t necessarily open those hours,” Stewart said.
“It could be staffing issues or other social issues – the ATMs here get smashed open often.”
Locals wanting to open or close accounts or withdraw large amounts of money have to make a multi-day trip to the nearest open branch, which for Westpac is Darwin, 826km away, or Broome, 916km away.
Stewart recently went on an overseas trip and when he couldn’t take money out at his local branch, he had to factor it into his travels.
“I couldn’t get it out from Commonwealth Bank (in Kununurra) because they were closed, so I had to wait until I got to Perth (a 34-hour drive, 2,892km away) before I flew out,” he said.
“I got it out no problem, but the idea that I may have missed it, because I only had a day before I flew out, and that was the only place I could access cash from, is ridiculous.”
This is a problem replicated across regional Australia. A Senate inquiry into regional bank closures will begin hearings in the Victorian town of Sale this month – a town which was also slated to lose its Westpac branch, before the bank announced a temporary stay.
More than 2,500km south of Kununurra, in the Goldfields region of WA, the Carnamah Shire Council lobbied Westpac for five months to prevent the closure of their local branch. The branch closed its doors on Friday. It was the only bank in town. There are just 400 people in the community and they say they feel as if they have been left behind by the “big four”.
“Westpac has never told us why they are closing the branch,” Carnamah Shire CEO Robert Paull, said
“They told us that since 2020, there has been an 18% reduction in foot traffic to the branch – a reflection of Covid – and there’s something like only two transactions every hour. This might be true, but we have an older population, and when they go in there they take time. They need assistance, so they do take longer.”
Carnamah’s closest Westpac branch is almost 120km away. Bank@Post has again been flagged as an alternative, however, the Carnamah post office has no wheelchair ramp.
Carnamah is a service hub – before the closure, people from even more remote communities would drive in to town do do their banking.
A community survey conducted by the council had 200 respondents, all of whom wanted the bank to remain open.
“[The] majority of the responses were on paper, not online, which is reflective of where people sit, people need to actually have face-to-face transactions,” shire president, Merle Isbister, said.
While locals in Carnamah do not have the option of switching to another bank with a local branch, people in other communities have said they are reconsidering who they bank with.
Gilgandra, near Dubbo in Western NSW, lost its Commonwealth Bank late last year. The next closest branch is in Dubbo, a 45-minute, 66km drive away.
Two other banks – NAB and Bendigo Bank – remain open, and the local ownership and community focus of the latter has seen it rise in popularity. It helps that NAB is limited to being open just three hours a day.
“I have changed banks since Commonwealth closed down, because it’s just too inconvenient and out of the way to have to go to Dubbo for my every day banking,” one Gilgandra local said.
It is the third time the Commonwealth Bank has closed its Gilgandra branch and the fourth time the town has lost a bank, says Gilgandra shire mayor and director of Gilgandra Financial Services, Doug Batten.
“We’ve lost Westpac, we’ve lost CommBank three times, I can’t see any of them coming back now,” he said.
While an hour round-trip doesn’t sound so bad on paper, doing that multiple times a week just to access an essential service costs time and money.
Peter Collins owns Yank Takeaway fish and chip shop in Yankalilla, South Australia, a small town about 72km from Adelaide on the Fleurieu Peninsula.
He said he was extremely frustrated when Bank SA – owned by Westpac – closed its local branch in September.
It was the town’s last bank.
“There’s no bank to do your banking,” he said. “It’s absolutely disgraceful that the banks treat us like this and have absolutely zero consideration.
“It’s just mind boggling because the place down here is an up-and-coming area, it’s really starting to take off. I used to bank every day, or every second day. Now I have to try and make it once a week.
“I will absolutely be changing banks as soon as I have the time.”
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