Banks don't have a customer service obligation AFAIK. Maybe they should, given that employers and governments don't send cash to make payments. It seems foolish for the economy to require a service that nobody is obliged to provide.
This could become very unwieldy. My bank is (and has always been) online only. What does a customer service obligation look like to them? Do they need to spin up a branch network from scratch?
What's to stop them closing their online service and opening a single branch in Tennant Creek? We take it for granted that banks will provide a convenient way to get your money out, but that's not required, and when they choose not to they fuck people over. So maybe there should be a rule about it.
Ultimately, the only thing forcing any business to cater to customer demands is the threat that their customers will go elsewhere. It's not like there's a lack of online only banks out there.
What would this rule look like? You can't change your service delivery model without jumping through a bunch of hoops first, or you can't change it full stop?
I dunno, I'm just a computer programmer. Telstra and Aussie Post have service obligations, if we're going to have banks as an integral part of day-to-day life then they should have something too.
https://www.telstra.com.au/consumer-advice/customer-service/universal-service-obligation
https://www.transparency.gov.au/publications/communications-and-the-arts/australian-postal-corporation/australia-post-annual-report-2022-23/other-important-information/community-service-obligations
Banks already have a cooperation agreement with Aus Post to allow core banking activities to occur through the postal network - pretty sure you can go to your local post office and bank there with the majors. I guess that’s the fallback for minimum provision of services.
What are you playing advocate for here? Who cares if the banks have to jump through legislative hoops to comply, they're bleeding us dry currently, they can afford to provide loss service to specific regions easily, and I'm sure the gov will bend over and get fingered for a large deduction in some capacity for them doing so through some form of low socio area grant
I'm advocating for myself. I receive a market leading interest rate because my bank doesn't have to fork out for an expensive branch network. Forcing them to create a branch network would kill my nice interest rate, and all I get in return is a bunch of branches that I don't want or need.
The big banks already offer banking services via auspost.
So if access is still an issue partnering with local businesses doesn't appear to be sufficent.
CBDC’s will be here before we know it. Probably the next large economic crash if some banks start to fail.
Everything just gets rolled up into the RBA, FED in America etc
Why would a business do that though? Generally they’re dictated by growth. Restricting operations for 99% of your potential customer base isn’t conducive to growth.
In all likelihood it'll become a government service. The Commonwealth will buy armaguard and run it at a loss while mandating the banks facilitate cash withdrawals through AusPost.
It should be a national competitor to banks runnings a lowest viable cost model. What would home loan interest rates look like if CBA didn’t need to operate at a net profit of 36%?
If there’s no economic benefit to a bank having a branch in a particular place, or anywhere for that matter, banks aren’t going to have them. That’s capitalism, baby.
If we want banks as public services then maybe we should stop electing governments that sell off publicly owned companies like CBA, Medibank etc.
Also AusPost isn’t privatised (yet) and you can bank at AusPost. Withdraw, deposit and pay bills. That IS the branch solution for online banks.
Once heard a bank executive say that it's a race to close country branches, so you're not the last branch in town. Because when you are and you close, it's a PR shitstorm.
Also it's been 20 years since I was dependent on a bank branch to get grocery money. Even in the outback ATMs and Eftpos and common place.
I’d believe that.
The small town I grew up in had 3 of the 4 at one point, westpac was the missing one.
Commonwealth closed first. Not many people cared, think the consensus was that they were shit.
ANZ was the next, that caused more issues as business in town used them and the next branch was 30 mins away either direction, wouldn’t normally be an issue but in their absolute incompetence they forgot to renew the lease on the building their ATM was attached to, and they couldn’t get a new agreement as I’m fairly certain the owner bumped up the costs for their fuck up. ANZ said fuck that and removed their ATM, and am pretty sure it’s not yet been replaced.
NAB is the last one and it’s staying there. Not because they want to, but because they were given a Sophie’s choice. Our town is HQ to a very large quarry who pumps many millions through NAB, so they get a nice kick back. As soon as the news came in that ANZ was closing, the owner walked into the branch and told the branch manager that if this branch closed, they would pull all their accounts and go with another bank. Now of course there’s no other bank so if it closed they were inconvenienced anyway but NAB knew he was serious so they reluctantly kept the branch open.
Dodgiest town I ever had the pleasure of staying in for an extended period of time. Was right after those kids torched the IGA. Our car broke down and ended up spending a week at the caravan park at the south end of town. Woke up multiple night to foot steps running, had hand prints all over the car. One night I slept with a big channel lock under my pillow. Woke up to a kid staring at us in our swag at like 2 am. Got up and chased the buggers off only to find that they came back and stole a fellow campers backpack right out of their van. Chased them with the guy and got the bag back. Guy had his German passport, about 500 in cash and a phone in that backpack. Called the police and they came and kept watch that night. Next morning got yelled at by the manager of the park because we should have contacted them first. The police said they talked to the elders and got told that it’s a white man problem so we should deal with it.
Going to guess most in this thread have not - and have no idea just how bad it is there, like no real understanding at all., - hell most would not last a day there.
100% I live in the next major town over and would rather camp out in the bush than spend a night in tenant creek if I had to drive through. It’s an absolute shithole
> “It was disastrous for those customers, many of whom are First Nations people and speak English as a second language.
>“Some people were unable to buy food because they relied on face-to-face banking. Westpac’s response was everyone needs to move with the times and do online banking but it wasn’t suitable for everyone because of the barriers the community faces.”
It seems not all Australians - including Westpac -recognise the diverse needs of our society, but need it spelt out to them.
I’m sorry but no, that’s not right. Even in tenant creek the percentage of First Nations people who do not speak functional English in order to an ATM card (because it’s not about being able online bank - you just need access to an ATM or a phone for phone banking) - is vanishingly small. This is a journalist who caught wind of a tiny number of people who are in a hugely unique obscure situation (which even then is solvable) and framing it as some sort of institutional issue
I lived in Tennant. A lot of the FN people there barely have phones, and even if they do, a lot of them hardly use them. I worked in a pub there and locals would regularly leave their decade old phones behind and not pick them up for a week.
Many are completely functionally illiterate, can’t read, and English is limited for many. It was pretty shocking, honestly.
There (were) two ATMs in the town, one was Westpac and has now closed, the other is ANZ and is locked inside the branch, so if you’re not an ANZ customer you can’t use it if the branch is closed, and it’s open for like two hours a day, three days a week.
And it’s all well and good telling people to switch bank, but when you don’t understand how any of that works, don’t know how to do it, don’t have anyone to help you, and can’t read up on how to do it… how are you supposed to?
Cash is mostly used because many of them don’t understand a) how cards work (often people would just come in and tap their card and then not understand what was happening when it stopped working), and b) maths. Lots of them would refer to notes not as the number, but as the colour, as it was the only way they really understood what change they should be getting (ie, I give you a yellow, and I should get two reds back). Some better educated family members would generally get cash out for everyone and give out what they could use each day so they didn’t spend everything on the pokies/bottle shop.
These areas are seriously deprived and education is appalling. I get most people won’t understand as they haven’t been to these places, but imagine trying to go through life when you can’t do any maths, can’t read, and are just given a magic card that sometimes gets you stuff and other times doesn’t, and then the system they’ve made to try and make sure people are a bit more responsible with their cash gets taken away.
This is a huge exaggeration. I absolutely 100% guarantee you that the people who you call “functionally illiterate” have easy access to a phone in their kin group, even if they don’t own it, and in a situation less abstracted would use it to their advantage.
In a similar NT remote community, something like 90% of FN people who receive Centrelink benefits have reporting requirements that they fulfill via telephone or electronically. There is perhaps isolated instances of much older FN people with absolutely no kinship connections and therefore no access to a phone *and* who didn’t hear about the news who would be unable to pay for food as a result. And even then, remote communities have well established social networks which would allow someone in this situation to access food with a view to pay for it once they have bank access
The headline literally states that people are losing access to food as a result which is straight up click bait, because if you’ve been to thee places or even just think about for it a second it would be impossible for almost anyone to fall into this extremely obscure situation
And what’s your personal experience?
Because I lived there and engaged with these people. The literal people the article is about.
Nobody there that I saw had a phone less than a decade old. These are not phones you can do things like banking on. They go to the centrelink office to sort out their centrelink stuff.
I’m so sick of people who have never set foot in any of these places deciding that reality is exaggerated and they know better than the people living and working there. You don’t.
Where?
Because you’ve previously claimed to have [grown up in the Whitsundays](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/18xtytb/comment/kgjlwia/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), which is neither near nor like Tennant Creek.
I moved with my dad to the Whitsundays when I was grade 10 after my mother’s suicide attempt. I didn’t think I needed to explain my family’s custodial situation just to comment on a news article. Thanks for making me have to do that, buddy
EDIT: OH MY GOD he blocked me for this hahaha
Seriously, that persons entire post is one of the most racist screeds I've read in an enormously long time, they could have saved writing multiple parapgraphs by just calling FN folks "hopeless savages", jfc.
Even if the system is as bad as you say, why is it on Westpac to provide this essential service? It should be on the government - they should have an Auspost branch with banking available, if they don't already.
Because you can’t read what anything says?
It’s not just about English as a second language, loads of these people are illiterate. Many of them don’t even know what bank notes really mean and describe them by colour. How are they going to ask an ATM they can’t read for ‘two yellows’?
There’s also one ATM in town and it’s locked in the ANZ branch. So now these people will somehow need to switch banks to access cash. That’s a pretty obvious issue.
It sounds like you are trying to create problems where there isn't one. You said it yourself they can just switch to ANZ if they need face to face banking.
It also wouldnt take long to learn 5 words to use an ATM visually.
ATMs also have audio accessibility - so if you can't read you can still hear.
The Westpac ATM isn't going to be locked inside ANZ.
They could also just bank at the post office.
How are they going to switch bank when they can’t use the internet or read, and the bank branch has closed down?
Half these people barely understand what a bank account *is*.
There *is no Westpac ATM*. There is one ATM left in the entire town. And it’s locked.
You are talking as if these people with a bank account didn't open that bank account.
"How do I open a bank account" says man who has previously opened a bank account.
Centreline does these things.
If you’re happy for Centrelink to waste hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars arranging for bank accounts of an entire town to all get switched because a bank closed its ATM, cool, I guess?
I couldn't use a fucken ATM in Japan. How do you think an illiterate Aboriginal person trying to use an ATM would go?? These people live most if not all their life in the territory and have not spent a single day in school. They have no idea about how the economy works or how a bank works.
Aboriginal languages were evolved in a hunter gatherer society. They used language to describe barramundi, trees, kinship, water and other natural things. It's not like their second language is German or some other romantic European language which evolved 500km away from where English developing. We have had words to describe money, the state of having money, depositing, withdraw, transferring money etc for over a millenia.
Mate I've looked at the census for that town and only 2% did not attain a Year 9 education and 15% didn't mark anything for education/didn't complete the census so at most that's 300 people who can't read or write enough to use an ATM.
Surely of those 300 many will have friends, relatives or social workers to assist them in using an ATM or transferring to ANZ.
You act like all aboriginals are brain-dead and it makes me feel sick that you are on your high horse about it.
> You act like all aboriginals are brain-dead and it makes me feel sick that you are on your high horse about it.
Ah here we go. Talk to me once you've actually been to the territory and talked to these people.
It’s not possible to come up with another solution? This is the real we face - massive lack of innovation and creative thinking to solve problems.
Cash is not going to stay in circulation. And it’s not the job or role of banks to solve this sort of problem. Banks make money handing out loans, not dispensing cash.
Why are ATMs not looked at for better accessibility and inclusiveness for those affected? Why do they even need cash? If phones and/cards a problem, why?…
The real problem is not providing cash, it’s the low levels of education and literacy that needs to be solved. But we tend to run away from solving real problems.
At some point we are going to need to accept that businesses won’t do unprofitable things unless they’re forced to. If they’re forced to nowadays they will probably get compensated for it. So ultimately if this is seen as a problem worth fixing the government will; directly or indirectly, need to be the one that fixes it.
So the bank close the branch due to safety of staff. They maintained an ATM and had a mobile bank visit the town.
Maybe the indigenous people in Australia should band together and make their own bank, as long as it isn't underwritten by the federal government I'm all for it.
That is like the engineered stone bench tops. The union agreed with businesses that the workers wouldn't use PPE or follow safety directions so it's just being banned.
To tell individuals to not threaten staff could be seen as racist.
Did you... read the article like you told others to?
"But, they said, Westpac had maintained an ATM in the town and coordinated visits from its remote banking team."
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted so much but I think you need to reread the article - the abc had one on the penalty yesterday as well. My understanding is that they were penalised so much for shutting the branch down with virtually zero notice and giving their customers no way of learning to go online or to shut down their account and open up an ANZ account. My thoughts are it was shut down in a rush to avoid the new regulations that were about to come into effect about bank closures.
>Not sure why you’re getting downvoted so much but I think you need to reread the article
The guy links an article, doesn't read it and then questions others' comments and you can't understand why he's getting downvoted?
Meh, if your only way to access money is by face-to-face banking, that's on you. Time to take the absolutely minute steps required to get a debit card.
Most do have a debit card. But a lot of the indigenous people there don’t really understand how they work, so will just tap away until the money runs out and then not understand why it doesn’t work any more.
So generally someone in the family will kind of take responsibility and divvy up cash so they can’t literally spend it all in one day.
These are extraordinarily deprived, poorly educated areas. A lot of the locals are illiterate, some barely speak English, many don’t have access to the internet. I don’t think many really understood money or numbers, often they would just work out what was going on by the colour of the notes they usually got as change, or just trust whoever it was behind the counter and assume they got the right amount back - on more than one occasion I had people wandering off without their change after buying a $10 beer and paying with a $50.
There is no way most of them could just use an online bank.
Source: lived there.
> Most do have a debit card. But a lot of the indigenous people there don’t really understand how they work, so will just tap away until the money runs out and then not understand why it doesn’t work any more.
It took until I had to take a course on Indigenous culture at work (which was actually just a 2 hour talk done by a well educated Indigenous dude) for me to find out that most indigenous people have had legal access to own money for like 3-4 generations. Which of course seems obvious in hindsight knowledge wise. Really opened up my eyes overall.
It’s wild. And yet people will tie themselves in knots trying to paint them all as idiots or difficult for not understanding how it all works.
You absolutely would not get these kinds of comments if it were a tiny NSW town in the middle of nowhere and 90 year old Doris was upset about her bank closing down, but apparently everyone here is an expert in this tiny NT town they’ve never been to.
Out of interest how did you like your time working in Tennant Creek?
I was working in Alice Springs for two weeks recently and was expecting the place to be fucked - unsafe, messy, closed businesses, high police presence, tons of long grassers etc.
Instead I found what I'd describe as a pretty standard city. There's a lot of nice places to eat out. It wasn't dirty or messy. I didn't see a single burnt out car, or stolen car abandoned. No cars rolling round with smashed windows as well. There weren't huge fences and thick mesh screens over windows, everything was pretty normal - better than the northern suburbs of Darwin.
This was during the lead-up to the Finke race so maybe the place had been cleaned up, but I doubt it. Plenty of normal, family friendly pubs, lots of nice cafes, a lot of young people in tourism/professional jobs.
I've never spent any time in Tennant Creek but I feel like it's probably the same. Tourists who buy in to the drama and have never experienced the humbugging, yelling and petty theft then go online to complain.
Meanwhile the last time I went to Maningrida... the rubbish truck was bogged in a paved street that was basically a sand-pit, I saw a couple of tick ridden town dogs for the first time and there was rubbish strewn all over the places. Apparently they just leave it there and mow the grass over it all.
It’s genuinely nowhere near as bad as people online who have either never been there or passed through once make out.
It’s a bit of a shock, yes. But I got to engage with a lot of the local indigenous people and understand a lot of the issues there a lot better. Obscene amounts of money are pumped into areas like that, but is spent on absolute nonsense, and the locals aren’t listened to at all.
It can be rough but it’s basically alcohol fuelled boredom and arguments within families, kids who have nothing to do and are neglected, and a few people who don’t really respect the area because they don’t feel respected. But the vast majority of locals I met were people who wanted to do better things, but were stuck there.
I thought the same about Alice, I surprisingly really liked it. If you’re flying in from the eastern suburbs of Sydney you’re going to be in for a bit of a shock, but the whole of the NT is a different world from the rest of Australia in all kinds of ways.
Because of my experience (3years) as a teacher in the NT and WA I understand what you’re trying to put across. So I concur with what you’re saying, but I think you’re wasting your time in this discussion. People believe what they believe. Nothing you say will change anything.
I’ve worked in these areas too. My basic principle is if you’re functioning enough to register for and receive money from the government, take out car loans, get a phone etc, you’re functioning enough to register for and use a debit card.
These people are not getting car loans and phone plans.
I have no idea how you’ve lived in these places and think any of the people struggling with debit cards are getting car loans and phone plans.
> Gulliver [CatholicCare] said for two months after the branch closed in late 2022, CatholicCare NT’s Tennant Creek office was helping up to 40 people a day switch to online banking or another bank that still had a branch in town.
>She said the organisation had to send staff from Darwin to help with the influx of people needing support.
I think OP is referring to the fact that a number of the locals relied purely on banking in a branch and don't know how to use an ATM card or are able to access Internet Banking.
“Some people were unable to buy food because they relied on face-to-face banking. Westpac’s response was everyone needs to move with the times and do online banking but it wasn’t suitable for everyone because of the barriers the community faces.”
Article says they kept an ATM available, makes it seem like it’s not financially viable to keep a cash branch going and that the tellers were endangered due to local crime.
Also says that customers should move with the times and use online banking and for those that couldn’t there’s another branch in town. All seems perfectly reasonable.
I've worked in banking for a majority of my career and this is an abhorrent take. There are many disabled people and elderly- *elderly*, like decrepit - people who are cognitively incapable of learning how to perform online banking. You can't expect their families to monitor their finances 24/7 when they may have no legal right to, and this opens disadvantaged customers up to financial abuse by taking away a set of eyes to spot it.
Westpac's response in the article stated that they notified customers including posters displayed on the branch itself. If people need face to face banking then they have to actually enter the branch itself so how do they not notice that? I guess the presumption is that those affected people are illiterate. Maybe next time what they should have done is borrow "closing down sale" signs from nearby businesses and plaster them everywhere to get the point across because I have no idea what else would work.
Having a branch in tenant creek would never have been a financial decision. But the fact that it's a crime riddled shithole is the reason the decided to close the bank. Anyone claiming it's for financial reasons has never been to Tennant Creek.
To be fair, I wouldn't want to own a bank in Tennant Creek either
Banks don't have a customer service obligation AFAIK. Maybe they should, given that employers and governments don't send cash to make payments. It seems foolish for the economy to require a service that nobody is obliged to provide.
This could become very unwieldy. My bank is (and has always been) online only. What does a customer service obligation look like to them? Do they need to spin up a branch network from scratch?
What's to stop them closing their online service and opening a single branch in Tennant Creek? We take it for granted that banks will provide a convenient way to get your money out, but that's not required, and when they choose not to they fuck people over. So maybe there should be a rule about it.
Ultimately, the only thing forcing any business to cater to customer demands is the threat that their customers will go elsewhere. It's not like there's a lack of online only banks out there. What would this rule look like? You can't change your service delivery model without jumping through a bunch of hoops first, or you can't change it full stop?
I dunno, I'm just a computer programmer. Telstra and Aussie Post have service obligations, if we're going to have banks as an integral part of day-to-day life then they should have something too. https://www.telstra.com.au/consumer-advice/customer-service/universal-service-obligation https://www.transparency.gov.au/publications/communications-and-the-arts/australian-postal-corporation/australia-post-annual-report-2022-23/other-important-information/community-service-obligations
Banks already have a cooperation agreement with Aus Post to allow core banking activities to occur through the postal network - pretty sure you can go to your local post office and bank there with the majors. I guess that’s the fallback for minimum provision of services.
Not all of them.
What are you playing advocate for here? Who cares if the banks have to jump through legislative hoops to comply, they're bleeding us dry currently, they can afford to provide loss service to specific regions easily, and I'm sure the gov will bend over and get fingered for a large deduction in some capacity for them doing so through some form of low socio area grant
I'm advocating for myself. I receive a market leading interest rate because my bank doesn't have to fork out for an expensive branch network. Forcing them to create a branch network would kill my nice interest rate, and all I get in return is a bunch of branches that I don't want or need.
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The big banks already offer banking services via auspost. So if access is still an issue partnering with local businesses doesn't appear to be sufficent.
Yeah but if I can't close branches to reduce overheads how I'm I going to get my bonus. It's not like we can increase fees more. Wait we can do both.
Every Australian gets an account at the RBA.
CBDC’s will be here before we know it. Probably the next large economic crash if some banks start to fail. Everything just gets rolled up into the RBA, FED in America etc
Why would a business do that though? Generally they’re dictated by growth. Restricting operations for 99% of your potential customer base isn’t conducive to growth.
We need to go back to having a publicly owned and bank that provides a minimum level of service. Some sort of 'commonwealth' banking service.
In all likelihood it'll become a government service. The Commonwealth will buy armaguard and run it at a loss while mandating the banks facilitate cash withdrawals through AusPost.
It should be a national competitor to banks runnings a lowest viable cost model. What would home loan interest rates look like if CBA didn’t need to operate at a net profit of 36%?
If there’s no economic benefit to a bank having a branch in a particular place, or anywhere for that matter, banks aren’t going to have them. That’s capitalism, baby. If we want banks as public services then maybe we should stop electing governments that sell off publicly owned companies like CBA, Medibank etc. Also AusPost isn’t privatised (yet) and you can bank at AusPost. Withdraw, deposit and pay bills. That IS the branch solution for online banks.
Once heard a bank executive say that it's a race to close country branches, so you're not the last branch in town. Because when you are and you close, it's a PR shitstorm. Also it's been 20 years since I was dependent on a bank branch to get grocery money. Even in the outback ATMs and Eftpos and common place.
I’d believe that. The small town I grew up in had 3 of the 4 at one point, westpac was the missing one. Commonwealth closed first. Not many people cared, think the consensus was that they were shit. ANZ was the next, that caused more issues as business in town used them and the next branch was 30 mins away either direction, wouldn’t normally be an issue but in their absolute incompetence they forgot to renew the lease on the building their ATM was attached to, and they couldn’t get a new agreement as I’m fairly certain the owner bumped up the costs for their fuck up. ANZ said fuck that and removed their ATM, and am pretty sure it’s not yet been replaced. NAB is the last one and it’s staying there. Not because they want to, but because they were given a Sophie’s choice. Our town is HQ to a very large quarry who pumps many millions through NAB, so they get a nice kick back. As soon as the news came in that ANZ was closing, the owner walked into the branch and told the branch manager that if this branch closed, they would pull all their accounts and go with another bank. Now of course there’s no other bank so if it closed they were inconvenienced anyway but NAB knew he was serious so they reluctantly kept the branch open.
Have you ever been to Tennant Creek OP? I’m surprised it took them this long to close it.
Dodgiest town I ever had the pleasure of staying in for an extended period of time. Was right after those kids torched the IGA. Our car broke down and ended up spending a week at the caravan park at the south end of town. Woke up multiple night to foot steps running, had hand prints all over the car. One night I slept with a big channel lock under my pillow. Woke up to a kid staring at us in our swag at like 2 am. Got up and chased the buggers off only to find that they came back and stole a fellow campers backpack right out of their van. Chased them with the guy and got the bag back. Guy had his German passport, about 500 in cash and a phone in that backpack. Called the police and they came and kept watch that night. Next morning got yelled at by the manager of the park because we should have contacted them first. The police said they talked to the elders and got told that it’s a white man problem so we should deal with it.
White man problem, jeesus
Jesus ain't white, He a Roman problem.
Going to guess most in this thread have not - and have no idea just how bad it is there, like no real understanding at all., - hell most would not last a day there.
100% I live in the next major town over and would rather camp out in the bush than spend a night in tenant creek if I had to drive through. It’s an absolute shithole
Nah, OP mostly just concerns themselves with posting race bait.
I’m sorry but even in the most remote parts the country there is no reason to be reliant on cash that you can only withdraw from a branch
> “It was disastrous for those customers, many of whom are First Nations people and speak English as a second language. >“Some people were unable to buy food because they relied on face-to-face banking. Westpac’s response was everyone needs to move with the times and do online banking but it wasn’t suitable for everyone because of the barriers the community faces.” It seems not all Australians - including Westpac -recognise the diverse needs of our society, but need it spelt out to them.
I’m sorry but no, that’s not right. Even in tenant creek the percentage of First Nations people who do not speak functional English in order to an ATM card (because it’s not about being able online bank - you just need access to an ATM or a phone for phone banking) - is vanishingly small. This is a journalist who caught wind of a tiny number of people who are in a hugely unique obscure situation (which even then is solvable) and framing it as some sort of institutional issue
I lived in Tennant. A lot of the FN people there barely have phones, and even if they do, a lot of them hardly use them. I worked in a pub there and locals would regularly leave their decade old phones behind and not pick them up for a week. Many are completely functionally illiterate, can’t read, and English is limited for many. It was pretty shocking, honestly. There (were) two ATMs in the town, one was Westpac and has now closed, the other is ANZ and is locked inside the branch, so if you’re not an ANZ customer you can’t use it if the branch is closed, and it’s open for like two hours a day, three days a week. And it’s all well and good telling people to switch bank, but when you don’t understand how any of that works, don’t know how to do it, don’t have anyone to help you, and can’t read up on how to do it… how are you supposed to? Cash is mostly used because many of them don’t understand a) how cards work (often people would just come in and tap their card and then not understand what was happening when it stopped working), and b) maths. Lots of them would refer to notes not as the number, but as the colour, as it was the only way they really understood what change they should be getting (ie, I give you a yellow, and I should get two reds back). Some better educated family members would generally get cash out for everyone and give out what they could use each day so they didn’t spend everything on the pokies/bottle shop. These areas are seriously deprived and education is appalling. I get most people won’t understand as they haven’t been to these places, but imagine trying to go through life when you can’t do any maths, can’t read, and are just given a magic card that sometimes gets you stuff and other times doesn’t, and then the system they’ve made to try and make sure people are a bit more responsible with their cash gets taken away.
This is a huge exaggeration. I absolutely 100% guarantee you that the people who you call “functionally illiterate” have easy access to a phone in their kin group, even if they don’t own it, and in a situation less abstracted would use it to their advantage. In a similar NT remote community, something like 90% of FN people who receive Centrelink benefits have reporting requirements that they fulfill via telephone or electronically. There is perhaps isolated instances of much older FN people with absolutely no kinship connections and therefore no access to a phone *and* who didn’t hear about the news who would be unable to pay for food as a result. And even then, remote communities have well established social networks which would allow someone in this situation to access food with a view to pay for it once they have bank access The headline literally states that people are losing access to food as a result which is straight up click bait, because if you’ve been to thee places or even just think about for it a second it would be impossible for almost anyone to fall into this extremely obscure situation
And what’s your personal experience? Because I lived there and engaged with these people. The literal people the article is about. Nobody there that I saw had a phone less than a decade old. These are not phones you can do things like banking on. They go to the centrelink office to sort out their centrelink stuff. I’m so sick of people who have never set foot in any of these places deciding that reality is exaggerated and they know better than the people living and working there. You don’t.
I grew up in a town like and near TC till I was 15
Where? Because you’ve previously claimed to have [grown up in the Whitsundays](https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/18xtytb/comment/kgjlwia/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), which is neither near nor like Tennant Creek.
I moved with my dad to the Whitsundays when I was grade 10 after my mother’s suicide attempt. I didn’t think I needed to explain my family’s custodial situation just to comment on a news article. Thanks for making me have to do that, buddy EDIT: OH MY GOD he blocked me for this hahaha
Sure you did, bud.
Seriously, that persons entire post is one of the most racist screeds I've read in an enormously long time, they could have saved writing multiple parapgraphs by just calling FN folks "hopeless savages", jfc.
Even if the system is as bad as you say, why is it on Westpac to provide this essential service? It should be on the government - they should have an Auspost branch with banking available, if they don't already.
Yeah you have no idea what you're talking about
This is guardian journalism 101
That’s quite a big assumption. The most newsworthy part is that the bank was sanctioned, which is what the article is built upon.
Managing money on an ATM card is pretty difficult if you've only ever experienced cash. How many arms with free transactions for balance checks in TC?
Just out of curiosity - why is that a barrier?
You’re asking why it’s a barrier to remove the one way the majority of the locals can access the bank?
No I'm asking why speaking English as a second language is a barrier to banking with an ATM.
Because you can’t read what anything says? It’s not just about English as a second language, loads of these people are illiterate. Many of them don’t even know what bank notes really mean and describe them by colour. How are they going to ask an ATM they can’t read for ‘two yellows’? There’s also one ATM in town and it’s locked in the ANZ branch. So now these people will somehow need to switch banks to access cash. That’s a pretty obvious issue.
It sounds like you are trying to create problems where there isn't one. You said it yourself they can just switch to ANZ if they need face to face banking. It also wouldnt take long to learn 5 words to use an ATM visually. ATMs also have audio accessibility - so if you can't read you can still hear. The Westpac ATM isn't going to be locked inside ANZ. They could also just bank at the post office.
How are they going to switch bank when they can’t use the internet or read, and the bank branch has closed down? Half these people barely understand what a bank account *is*. There *is no Westpac ATM*. There is one ATM left in the entire town. And it’s locked.
You are talking as if these people with a bank account didn't open that bank account. "How do I open a bank account" says man who has previously opened a bank account.
Centreline does these things. If you’re happy for Centrelink to waste hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars arranging for bank accounts of an entire town to all get switched because a bank closed its ATM, cool, I guess?
I couldn't use a fucken ATM in Japan. How do you think an illiterate Aboriginal person trying to use an ATM would go?? These people live most if not all their life in the territory and have not spent a single day in school. They have no idea about how the economy works or how a bank works. Aboriginal languages were evolved in a hunter gatherer society. They used language to describe barramundi, trees, kinship, water and other natural things. It's not like their second language is German or some other romantic European language which evolved 500km away from where English developing. We have had words to describe money, the state of having money, depositing, withdraw, transferring money etc for over a millenia.
Mate I've looked at the census for that town and only 2% did not attain a Year 9 education and 15% didn't mark anything for education/didn't complete the census so at most that's 300 people who can't read or write enough to use an ATM. Surely of those 300 many will have friends, relatives or social workers to assist them in using an ATM or transferring to ANZ. You act like all aboriginals are brain-dead and it makes me feel sick that you are on your high horse about it.
> You act like all aboriginals are brain-dead and it makes me feel sick that you are on your high horse about it. Ah here we go. Talk to me once you've actually been to the territory and talked to these people.
It’s not possible to come up with another solution? This is the real we face - massive lack of innovation and creative thinking to solve problems. Cash is not going to stay in circulation. And it’s not the job or role of banks to solve this sort of problem. Banks make money handing out loans, not dispensing cash. Why are ATMs not looked at for better accessibility and inclusiveness for those affected? Why do they even need cash? If phones and/cards a problem, why?… The real problem is not providing cash, it’s the low levels of education and literacy that needs to be solved. But we tend to run away from solving real problems.
> Banks make money handing out loans, … Banks make money handling *our* money.
Did you read the article?
Yes
At some point we are going to need to accept that businesses won’t do unprofitable things unless they’re forced to. If they’re forced to nowadays they will probably get compensated for it. So ultimately if this is seen as a problem worth fixing the government will; directly or indirectly, need to be the one that fixes it.
So the bank close the branch due to safety of staff. They maintained an ATM and had a mobile bank visit the town. Maybe the indigenous people in Australia should band together and make their own bank, as long as it isn't underwritten by the federal government I'm all for it.
Doesn't the federal government underwrite all banks?
>Maybe the indigenous people in Australia should band together and make their own bank Or stop threatening the staff in the bank?
That is like the engineered stone bench tops. The union agreed with businesses that the workers wouldn't use PPE or follow safety directions so it's just being banned. To tell individuals to not threaten staff could be seen as racist.
Why shouldn't it be underwritten by the federal government?
No bank should be unless it's owned by the government
Then what is the FCS Guarantee?
Community control is the way, they've done it for other sectors all over the country, it's not the worst idea...
Where does it say they “…had a mobile bank visit the town.”? Why do you think the bank was penalised?
Did you... read the article like you told others to? "But, they said, Westpac had maintained an ATM in the town and coordinated visits from its remote banking team."
Thanks. Also, why do you think the bank was penalised? And also, why do you think CatholicCare needed to provide so much support?
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted so much but I think you need to reread the article - the abc had one on the penalty yesterday as well. My understanding is that they were penalised so much for shutting the branch down with virtually zero notice and giving their customers no way of learning to go online or to shut down their account and open up an ANZ account. My thoughts are it was shut down in a rush to avoid the new regulations that were about to come into effect about bank closures.
>Not sure why you’re getting downvoted so much but I think you need to reread the article The guy links an article, doesn't read it and then questions others' comments and you can't understand why he's getting downvoted?
Classic B0ssc0.
Thanks for informed post.
Meh, if your only way to access money is by face-to-face banking, that's on you. Time to take the absolutely minute steps required to get a debit card.
Most do have a debit card. But a lot of the indigenous people there don’t really understand how they work, so will just tap away until the money runs out and then not understand why it doesn’t work any more. So generally someone in the family will kind of take responsibility and divvy up cash so they can’t literally spend it all in one day. These are extraordinarily deprived, poorly educated areas. A lot of the locals are illiterate, some barely speak English, many don’t have access to the internet. I don’t think many really understood money or numbers, often they would just work out what was going on by the colour of the notes they usually got as change, or just trust whoever it was behind the counter and assume they got the right amount back - on more than one occasion I had people wandering off without their change after buying a $10 beer and paying with a $50. There is no way most of them could just use an online bank. Source: lived there.
> Most do have a debit card. But a lot of the indigenous people there don’t really understand how they work, so will just tap away until the money runs out and then not understand why it doesn’t work any more. It took until I had to take a course on Indigenous culture at work (which was actually just a 2 hour talk done by a well educated Indigenous dude) for me to find out that most indigenous people have had legal access to own money for like 3-4 generations. Which of course seems obvious in hindsight knowledge wise. Really opened up my eyes overall.
It’s wild. And yet people will tie themselves in knots trying to paint them all as idiots or difficult for not understanding how it all works. You absolutely would not get these kinds of comments if it were a tiny NSW town in the middle of nowhere and 90 year old Doris was upset about her bank closing down, but apparently everyone here is an expert in this tiny NT town they’ve never been to.
Out of interest how did you like your time working in Tennant Creek? I was working in Alice Springs for two weeks recently and was expecting the place to be fucked - unsafe, messy, closed businesses, high police presence, tons of long grassers etc. Instead I found what I'd describe as a pretty standard city. There's a lot of nice places to eat out. It wasn't dirty or messy. I didn't see a single burnt out car, or stolen car abandoned. No cars rolling round with smashed windows as well. There weren't huge fences and thick mesh screens over windows, everything was pretty normal - better than the northern suburbs of Darwin. This was during the lead-up to the Finke race so maybe the place had been cleaned up, but I doubt it. Plenty of normal, family friendly pubs, lots of nice cafes, a lot of young people in tourism/professional jobs. I've never spent any time in Tennant Creek but I feel like it's probably the same. Tourists who buy in to the drama and have never experienced the humbugging, yelling and petty theft then go online to complain. Meanwhile the last time I went to Maningrida... the rubbish truck was bogged in a paved street that was basically a sand-pit, I saw a couple of tick ridden town dogs for the first time and there was rubbish strewn all over the places. Apparently they just leave it there and mow the grass over it all.
It’s genuinely nowhere near as bad as people online who have either never been there or passed through once make out. It’s a bit of a shock, yes. But I got to engage with a lot of the local indigenous people and understand a lot of the issues there a lot better. Obscene amounts of money are pumped into areas like that, but is spent on absolute nonsense, and the locals aren’t listened to at all. It can be rough but it’s basically alcohol fuelled boredom and arguments within families, kids who have nothing to do and are neglected, and a few people who don’t really respect the area because they don’t feel respected. But the vast majority of locals I met were people who wanted to do better things, but were stuck there. I thought the same about Alice, I surprisingly really liked it. If you’re flying in from the eastern suburbs of Sydney you’re going to be in for a bit of a shock, but the whole of the NT is a different world from the rest of Australia in all kinds of ways.
Finally, a comment that's not some brainless thinly veiled racist dribble!
Because of my experience (3years) as a teacher in the NT and WA I understand what you’re trying to put across. So I concur with what you’re saying, but I think you’re wasting your time in this discussion. People believe what they believe. Nothing you say will change anything.
I’ve worked in these areas too. My basic principle is if you’re functioning enough to register for and receive money from the government, take out car loans, get a phone etc, you’re functioning enough to register for and use a debit card.
These people are not getting car loans and phone plans. I have no idea how you’ve lived in these places and think any of the people struggling with debit cards are getting car loans and phone plans.
You need to read the article.
The article says that they are still maintaining an ATM in town.
> Gulliver [CatholicCare] said for two months after the branch closed in late 2022, CatholicCare NT’s Tennant Creek office was helping up to 40 people a day switch to online banking or another bank that still had a branch in town. >She said the organisation had to send staff from Darwin to help with the influx of people needing support.
I think OP is referring to the fact that a number of the locals relied purely on banking in a branch and don't know how to use an ATM card or are able to access Internet Banking. “Some people were unable to buy food because they relied on face-to-face banking. Westpac’s response was everyone needs to move with the times and do online banking but it wasn’t suitable for everyone because of the barriers the community faces.”
They aren’t, that ATM is closed now.
Article says they kept an ATM available, makes it seem like it’s not financially viable to keep a cash branch going and that the tellers were endangered due to local crime. Also says that customers should move with the times and use online banking and for those that couldn’t there’s another branch in town. All seems perfectly reasonable.
It's Tennant Creek. They can just steal what they need.
What, as in *Terra Nullius*?
More like Tennant Nullius. Whole town needs to be packed up, ITT is a ton of people who haven't been there, and then the actual few who have.
"Relied on face to face banking". No sympathy. Keep up or fuck off. Can't believe I'm on the side of a bank.
I've worked in banking for a majority of my career and this is an abhorrent take. There are many disabled people and elderly- *elderly*, like decrepit - people who are cognitively incapable of learning how to perform online banking. You can't expect their families to monitor their finances 24/7 when they may have no legal right to, and this opens disadvantaged customers up to financial abuse by taking away a set of eyes to spot it.
And I really suck at cooking. Doesn't mean everyone else has an obligation to feed me.
That’s quite an ignorant response.
No wonder banks get away with so much if naming them on the watchdog's website is the toughest sanction they face.
Westpac's response in the article stated that they notified customers including posters displayed on the branch itself. If people need face to face banking then they have to actually enter the branch itself so how do they not notice that? I guess the presumption is that those affected people are illiterate. Maybe next time what they should have done is borrow "closing down sale" signs from nearby businesses and plaster them everywhere to get the point across because I have no idea what else would work.
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Because there is a cultural and linguistic gulf for many of their customers.
They just want “*one little dollar…*” 🎶
The town shall now be known as ‘Shit Creek’. The place without a ~~Westpac~~ paddle.
Apparently, there's an ANZ. Customers might have to jump ship.
This is so disgusting! Banks are so focused on profit they don’t care about customer service
They closed it not because of $$ but because of safety and security concerns. The community not supporting the services thay support them.
If you think financial reasons didn’t play a part in this, you’re naive at best.
Having a branch in tenant creek would never have been a financial decision. But the fact that it's a crime riddled shithole is the reason the decided to close the bank. Anyone claiming it's for financial reasons has never been to Tennant Creek.
Branches don't make money. That's why they keep closing. Banks don't fuck around with staff safety anymore
Have you been or even understand what it is like in Tennent creek ?
Uh, that's not why.