Mr ROSS CAMERON (Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) (3:44 PM) —I am happy to respond to the matter of public importance that has been raised today. In fact, the government agrees with the opposition that this is not a matter to be trivialised. This is a serious challenge and a matter which ought rightly to occupy the time of the parliament in a debate such as this. Where we differ is on the story to be told about the availability of banking services to people in regional and rural Australia.

We begin with an acceptance of the importance of banking and financial services to smaller communities. Those of us from huge metropolitan areas need to appreciate the social ecosystem of a smaller country town: if you lose a bank you can lose the anchor tenant in a smaller regional shopping centre. A bank providing the cash also lubricates commerce. When that source of cash disappears, it can create significant reverberations as the pebble falls into the pond. If you lose a professional, a bank manager or bank staff from a country town then, potentially, you wind up losing their families as well. If you lose a family, then you can lose a teacher from the school in the pro rata allocation of teaching resources. If you lose a teacher, then you can lose a subject. If you lose a subject, then you wind up seeing more of your kids being bussed out somewhere or leaving for boarding school in one of the bigger cities instead of being educated in town.

There is a tremendous determination in Australia's towns to maintain services and resources. Most recently, this was driven home to me on this year's Pollie Pedal charity bike ride, which I participated in with a number of my colleagues, including the Minister for Health and Ageing, the member for Murray and the member for Farrer. We rode into the Murray town of Yarrawonga-Mulwala, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, which has a population of about 10,000 or so. I met with John Gorman, the principal of the largest law firm in town, the chair of the Central Murray Credit Union and other members of the regional chamber of commerce. Mr Gorman talked about the challenge of retaining professionals in the town. For example, when a young lawyer came up from Melbourne to work at his law practice, the people in the town went to enormous efforts to ensure that he stayed for more than a couple of years before moving elsewhere. One of the strategies of the people in the town was to try to find a wife for him from Yarrawonga-Mulwala. I began to smile and he said, `You think I'm joking.' He said that it was critically important to retain the availability of professional and financial services. He talked about the importance of regulating financial services. Losing one qualified teller in the credit union presented a significant training and staffing problem. He urged me to continue with the government's `light touch' approach to regulation in recognition of the impacts on smaller credit unions in country towns.

We are all for the maintenance of quality financial and banking services to Australia's regional and rural communities. The member for Bruce produced a range of data, but the story from the most recent Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority report indicates that the size of the banking, building society and credit union branch networks over the period 2002-03 was essentially unchanged. The evidence showed that the branch networks of the regional banks had increased over that period, with particularly strong growth in the Bank of Queensland and the Bendigo Bank. Having attended the opening of Bendigo Bank's 125th branch just a couple of weeks ago, I can attest to its growth since its creation five years ago. So we have a new bank entrant in the Australian financial services sector specifically targeting regional communities and outer metropolitan areas—in this instance, an outer metropolitan area in the electorate of Deakin. I congratulate the member for Deakin, Phil Barresi, for his inspired individual leadership in drawing together the community in Blackburn South, which led to a fantastic community celebration—the mums, dads, kids and shopkeepers were all at Blackburn South to celebrate the opening of a financial service in an area where a number of banks had previously left. This is a demonstration of the flexibility, adaptability and competitive response of Australia's vibrant financial services sector.

This matter of public importance is about not just bank branches but affordable and accessible banking services. There has been some decline in bank branches in some parts of the country, but we have seen an absolute explosion in the availability of non-branch bank services. I will refer to six in particular. Firstly, there is the availability of cash withdrawal from EFTPOS—electronic funds transfer at point of sale. In 1995 there were 62,000 EFTPOS facilities around Australia. Today, there are 450,000. There has been an explosion in the availability of EFTPOS facilities which, in effect, has turned every bottle shop, many cafes and every supermarket into a financial service provider. Many of these facilities are in our smaller regional and rural communities. The number of EFTPOS transactions has risen from 30 million to 73 million over that same period, more than doubling the availability of that service.

The automatic teller machine network saves people from having to go into a branch and in many cases is provided where there is no branch. The number of automatic teller machines since 1995 has grown from 6,000 to 21,000, more than tripling the availability of ATM withdrawal and deposit services. Over the same period, the number of transactions has risen from 39 million to 63 million. This is not some moribund, stagnant financial services environment; it is an area where we are seeing a massive rate of growth in non-branch financial services. We have seen the advent of phone banking and Internet banking. Nearly every Australian has access to the phone but only 50 per cent have access to the Internet. The Internet and the phone allow people who cannot physically get to a bank branch—perhaps they are on properties in remote areas—to now have access to basic banking services. The member for Bruce talked about the costs of ATMs, but the fact that people now have the capacity to do basic transactions—through EFTPOS, ATMs, phone banking and Internet banking—in remote locations has saved about $1.75 per transaction on the cost of doing those transactions over the counter. That is a significant saving for Australia's bank customers.

After those initiatives, we can then look at things like giroPost, community banking—I have touched on the Bendigo Bank and I will return in a minute to community banking—and the government's special initiative of rural transaction centres. If we look at post offices providing banking services, we have seen in 2002-03 that the network of giroPost services has risen by another 28 in the last year to 3,000 giroPost facilities. Again, that is a creation of this government. Then, we can look at the rural transaction centres. I note that I am going to be followed in this debate by the member for Parkes, who has just celebrated the opening of new regional transaction centres at Tullamore and is eagerly awaiting and lobbying for the approval of a regional transaction centre at Wilcannia and Menindee.

The Chief Government Whip has joined us in the chamber. He is a keen cyclist and joined us on our Pollie Pedal bike ride. I think he was with us when we rode into Gulargambone in western New South Wales in 2002, in the electorate of Gwydir. We were greeted by a posse of kids from Gulargambone Central School on bikes. They led us into the town and I remember one of the parents, Sandra Kelly, gave us a fabulous introduction to the town and its vibrancy and optimism. The centrepiece of it was the establishment of a regional transaction centre under this government's Regional Partnerships program.

If I return for a moment to the community banking centre, on a recent trip to Darwin I was deeply impressed by the activities of a credit union called the Traditional Credit Union, established 1994. The member for Bruce talked about services for Indigenous communities in remote centres. He should be aware that the Traditional Credit Union, headquartered in Darwin, has now opened 12 branches throughout Arnhem Land and the northern part of the Northern Territory. Those 12 branches are employing 50 people, 35 of whom are Indigenous and, of those, 11 are branch managers. The Traditional Credit Union has a current membership of 10,103. It has grown from having one to 12 branches. We see this picture of vibrancy, even in the most remote centres of the country.

In this combination of EFTPOS, ATMs, phone banking, Internet banking, giroPost, community banking like the Bendigo Bank and the credit union movement, and regional transaction centres, we are seeing a tremendous surge of availability of basic banking service spread right across this country. In relation to giroPost in my own electorate in metropolitan Sydney, in the strip shopping centre of the suburb of Telopea, when the last bank pulled out and Australia Post threatened to close down the contracted Australia Post bank service provider, the whole town mobilised to force the first backdown in the history of Australia Post, retaining that service in Telopea. That victory of a local community over the monolith of Australia Post is now celebrated every year in the Waratah Festival, highlighting the importance of those services to outer metropolitan areas in seats like my own and in places like Gulargambone, Tullamore, Menindee and Yarrawonga-Mulwala.

Banking services are critically important to healthy, vibrant communities. The story in Australia today is a good story. This government has moved not only to widen accessibility to banking services but also to increase their affordability. Through the leadership of Peter Costello, the Treasurer, in the introduction of a new tax system we saw the capacity for us to lever the states into the removal of financial institutions duty from 1 July 2001, saving Australia's bank customers about $1.4 billion a year. We have not stopped there or rested on our laurels: the Treasurer is now pressing for the removal of debits taxes, which we should see from 1 July 2005. So, unlike so many of the state Labor governments and, we suspect, any new Labor government nationally, under which the pressure on taxes would be ever upward—finding new taxes and increasing existing taxes—under this government we see the pressure on taxes downwards to reduce costs to families and business. We have seen official interest rates fall by four per cent since we were elected in 1996. Bank margins, through a more competitive financial services sector, have been squeezed by 1½ per cent to two per cent, saving bank customers—ordinary Australian families—vast amounts of money. Most recently, the Reserve Bank's standard on credit card interchange fees has forced a downward pressure of, we estimate, about $400 million on the cost of credit cards in Australia.

We are very pleased as a government to respond to this question of the availability of banking services to regional and remote Australia. We do not rest on our laurels; there is always more work to be done. The member for Parkes is right to be lobbying for two more rural transaction centres in his electorate. But if and when they come it will be part of an unfolding story of competition, efficiency, vibrancy and an expanding availability of basic banking services to ordinary Australians, wherever they may live.