THE Nationals state leader and Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh says he is “furious with Bendigo Bank” over planned closures in Cohuna and Pyramid Hill and describes it as worse than the big four.
Mr Walsh said the big four banks had made no secret about their lack of interest in regional Victoria but Bendigo Bank “rose to success on the back of so many small towns with its promise to be the community bank”.
He said towns such as Cohuna, Pyramid Hill and Barham supported Bendigo Bank with “enthusiasm and gratitude – and this is the thanks they get”.
“For Bendigo Bank to pull out of small towns across regional Victoria with the excuse they don’t generate enough business goes against everything the bank originally says it was going to deliver,” Mr Walsh said.
“Obviously small towns are not going to be big business, but neither would you expect a community-based banking system to be a huge enterprise.
“But since Bendigo Bank and Adelaide Bank got together, the losers have been the very people who helped get the whole show on the road.
“The number of people at today’s Cohuna protest meeting, their obvious disappointment, and in some cases distress, is an indictment of the board and senior management of Bendigo Bank.”
Mr Walsh said many senior citizens in the three towns and surrounding areas now faced long drives to access banking facilities because many of them were not digitally savvy. Many did not trust cyberspace, especially after recent hacking headlines.
He said there was not even an ATM in Pyramid Hill.
Mr Walsh said the other potential fallout was from groups such as football and netball clubs, which were incorporated and could not operate on the card economy. They needed to use a bank for get cash to manage home-match weekends and to bank takings.
“In the case of Pyramid Hill, that will mean going into Kerang, so there is every chance the clubs will buy their drinks there for the weekend, use the bigger supermarket – and even stop for a meal or to fill their tank,” Mr Walsh said.
“That bleeds money out of the local economy and, once that starts, the decline is often irreversible.
“The people who have turned out in Cohuna today, and all the people in the three towns represented here can rightly feel betrayed.
“I even have concerns between the figures Bendigo Bank is quoting about declining transactions and the figures the agencies are telling me they really do.
“The whole situation has the whiff of contempt and a lack of interest in the people and communities which are the real faces of this brutal and uncaring decision.”
