After receiving more than 600 submissions and touring the country to hear the concerns of local businesses and communities, the inquiry provided eight recommendations to the federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than a year later, Westpac announced a host of new initiatives to boost regional branches, including a graduate program enticing staff to the regions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chief executive Anthony Miller said it came after a full review into how the company serviced rural Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We want to make sure these [regional] areas have access to the services they need to prosper and grow,” he said.<\/p>\n
Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA chief executive Kitty Prodonovich said it was good to see the major bank respond to the grievances raised.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kitty Prodonovich says a holistic approach is needed to ensure gaps are filled in regional banking services. (ABC News: Julian Robins)<\/p>\n
“My hope is that they’ve listened and that people in regional WA aren’t going to have another service close down or taken away,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They do have quite a big regional footprint in WA, but I think one of the bigger issues is how do we look at those services that are getting withdrawn, and how do we make sure something else is in their place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“One of the concerns we have about it is often it seems to be a decision [to close] is made from far away by people who haven’t worked, lived or done business in regional WA.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recommendations still not accepted\u00a0<\/p>\n
Queensland Senator Matt Canavan, who chaired the regional banking inquiry, welcomed Westpac’s commitment, but said the federal government still needed to step up. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s good to see there’s been a moratorium on bank closures at least from the major banks, and I welcome Westpac doing this,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The downside is we need to try and replace financial services being lost in those towns where regional branches have already closed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Our report had a number of recommendations that the government still has not responded to, despite them being made more than a year ago now.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Matt Canavan chaired the inquiry. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)<\/p>\n
Senator Canavan said if banks had to close branches, there should be other solutions offered for regional communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“[Banks] should only be doing closures in a very careful way, making sure people are not simply left with no other solution,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That hasn’t been happening, and so one of our recommendations was that it needs to be forced by the government, but we haven’t gotten a response on that yet.<\/p>\n
“I think there needs to be a role of government here to fill in these gaps, just like we do with telecommunications or education services. Financial services are essential too.”<\/p>\n
Treasurer Jim Chalmers welcomed Westpac’s announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This is welcome news and builds on the commitments we secured from the big banks in February to keep services available in regional Australia,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Westpac’s announcement today reflects the kinds of commitment we want to see in regional Australia \u2026 and we encourage other banks to follow Westpac’s lead.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Australia’s largest banks has committed to retaining regional branches for another three years, following a federal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,19513,167514,99,167512,167511,23847,167515,167513,45,8420],"class_list":["post-291309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bank-closures","tag-banking-inquiry","tag-business","tag-federal-inquiry","tag-moratorium-extension","tag-regional-banking","tag-senate-banking-report","tag-senator-matt-canavan","tag-wa-news","tag-westpac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}