Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026, Cash Distribution Framework (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026

Mr VENNING (Grey) (11:34): I rise to speak on the Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026. Let me be clear from the outset. The coalition will not oppose this bill, will help pass it and will help pass it quickly.

Cash is critical national infrastructure, and it is right to protect it. But I want the House to understand what cash means in a place like my electorate of Grey and why the government's late arrival to this problem matters so much to the people I represent. My electorate covers over 90 per cent of South Australia.

In a capital city, cash is a choice; you tap a card or you tap a phone and, if the terminal goes down, there is an ATM in the foyer or a bank around the corner. In parts of my electorate, the nearest bank or ATM is not a dash up the road; it can be hundreds of kilometres away. So, when the cash system fails in the country or in the bush, it is not an inconvenience; it becomes a crisis.

The Reserve Bank published its latest work on this in April, drawing on the 2025 Consumer Payments Survey. The findings are worth putting on the record. About half of Australians use cash in a typical week.

Around 15 per cent of all payments and about 19 per cent of in-person payments are still made in cash. After decades of decline, cash use has stabilised—as I say, cash is king. About 1½ million Australian adults rely mainly on cash for everyday payments.

One in three Aussies says they would face hardship or major inconvenience if they could not withdraw cash. Among those who use cash the most, that figure is over 70 per cent, and the Reserve Bank is clear about who those Australians are: older Australians, households on lower incomes, people who find online banking difficult, people living in regional Australia and people in remote communities, including Indigenous communities where digital services are less reliable or simply don't exist at all.

We must remember that, in a lot of these remote communities, there is no internet and there is no phone reception, so POS machines simply don't work. That is the description of my electorate. The Reserve Bank makes one further point: cash is a backup.

Our emergency services agencies tell Australians to keep cash in an emergency kit so they can still buy what they need when the power or the phone network is down—under this government, the power and the network are down a lot—and, in Grey, that is not a theory. So how did the nation's cash system end up in this position? Well, in June 2023, the ACCC approved the merger of Australia's two largest cash-in-transit companies, Armaguard and Prosegur.

That decision handed one company control of 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the market—a private monopoly over how cash physically moves around this country. The ACCC only allowed it with a temporary three-year undertaking, setting conditions on the merged business until September of 2026. That should have been the starting gun for this government to build a proper, permanent framework.

It wasn't. The merger was finalised in September. By October, just weeks later, Armaguard went to the government, the Reserve Bank and the major banks and said that, without an extra $190 million over the three years, it would no longer be viable.

By Easter of 2024, the risks were laid bare. Armaguard warned that it could not keep operating without a large bailout. Coles paused cash deliveries and limited in-store withdrawals.

Shoppers faced a real prospect of not being able to get cash or even use it over a long weekend. It took an emergency meeting chaired by the Governor of the Reserve Bank and a $50 million rescue from the banks and the major retailers to keep the trucks running. Further support was needed again in 2025.

With the ACCC's undertaking due to expire in a month's time, the government has, at the eleventh hour, finally turned up with a plan. They should have been working on this from day one. They should have been working on this from the day that the merger was approved.

Instead, they delayed, and that delay put the ongoing strength of our cash system at risk. The last thing this country needs is a run on cash. That is a dangerous thing for an economy to face, and this government should have taken it seriously in June of 2023, when the merger was announced.

This is a government that waits for a crisis instead of preventing it. On the bill itself, it finally puts a regulation in charge of the cash distribution system. It creates an emergency regime so that, if the carrier is ever at risk of collapsing, cash can keep moving—rather than the system simply falling over.

The Reserve Bank would manage that regime with emergency powers similar to those APRA already holds over banks and insurers—and to the financial market infrastructure regime. It gives the ACCC the power to require fair and transparent pricing, to approve the terms offered to banks and to retailers and to set service-level standards instead of having a monopoly set its own terms.

In a crisis, the Treasurer, with the written approval of the Minister for Finance, can draw up to $400 million per event from consolidated revenue, to be recovered afterwards from the major users. We are the party of lower regulation, free enterprise and less government interference. That has not changed.

But a monopoly is a market failure. You cannot have one company setting the price of moving the nation's cash without anybody watching. That is not fair.

That is not fair on the Australians who rely on it. These powers are sensible; they are the same kind we already use to protect banking, insurance and payments. We support them.

But here is the problem. This bill makes sure cash gets delivered; it does nothing to guarantee that you can actually spend it once it gets there. Labor's cash payment mandate, which commenced on 1 January of this year, is simply inadequate.

It only covers supermarkets and fuel—only up to $500 and only between 7 am and 9 pm. It does not even cover medicines bought from a pharmacy, so an older Australian who has budgeted in cash their whole life can be told that their money is not good enough for their own prescriptions. That is not good enough.

Then there is a larger hole. Cash only works if you can withdraw it and if a business can bank it. We have seen over 800 bank closures since 2022.

More than 2,489 closed between 2017 and the middle of last year. The moratorium on regional bank closures expires on 31 July 2027. It only applies to major banks, and many of them left our towns long before it was signed.

Only last year, we had banks close down in Tumby Bay, Cleve and Wudinna, never to be opened again. Those communities no longer have access to banking services. Previous to that, up in Coober Pedy, a town five hours away from Port Augusta and some seven hours away from Alice Springs—there is no bank in that community of 1,600 people.

The moratorium ends in less than 12 months, and this government has no plan for the day after. You cannot protect the cash system while the places to keep cash keep disappearing. It's not only about taking money out; it's about putting it back in.

The Reserve Bank found that around 75 per cent of Australians report inconvenient access to withdrawal services, but only 65 per cent say the same about deposits. By both measures, access has become less convenient than it was three years ago. More than two-thirds of merchants who accept cash report problems doing so.

They struggle to find somewhere to deposit cash and draw out change. In the city, that is a walk down the street; in my electorate, it is a small-business owner driving an hour and a half each way, with the week's takings on the passenger seat, to a branch two towns over. Until recently, Peter and Wendy Amey ran the Orroroo post office.

There is no bank in Orroroo. The post office is the only option for banking services in that town not just for residents but for businesses and community organisations—the pub, the footy club, the netball club—and there are strict limits on how much cash the post office can hold. At the time, it was $15,000; it's just been increased to $20,000.

That sounds like a lot, but when there are no banking services in town it simply is not. On pension day, that money goes out the door quickly, even with the $2,000 daily limit in place. And it's not just on pension day.

Say you want to buy a second-hand car and the seller wants cash. If the price is 4½ grand you cannot simply walk up and withdraw that; it takes three days to do so. Or, on a Monday, when the pub and the sports club want to deposit their cash, all of a sudden you're over your holding limit.

Peter and Wendy Amey then had to notify the area managers, and it could take days to bring it back down. Too much cash is a problem; not enough cash is a problem. And a family behind a post office counter in the country is left to manage it.

It is worse further out. In the more remote communities, the mail run might be only once or twice a week—and in the last six months not at all, given that the roads in the north-east of the state are still closed. The government has no plan for what will happen after the branch moratorium ends.

Then again, this government has no plan for regional, rural and remote Australia at all. It is a city-centric government with blinkers on as to the realities of regional, rural and remote Australia. Policies get written for a postcode where the bank, the chemist, the ATM and the mobile towers are all within walking distance.

We saw it with the 3G shutdown, when the promise was equivalent coverage but the delivery was silent on the handset. We see it with a cash payment mandate that assumes that the only things you ever buy with cash are groceries and fuel. And we see it here in a framework that protects the trucks but forgets the town they are driving to.

The coalition will help pass this bill and will help pass it quickly, because the undertaking runs out in September. Putting a regulator in charge of cash distribution is the right call. Giving the Reserve Bank the power to keep cash moving in a crisis is the right call.

Requiring fair and transparent pricing from a monopoly is the right call. But let's be honest about the record. This is a government that let the cash system drift for three years and acted only when the clock ran down.

For the people I represent, cash is not nostalgia, and it is not a preference. It is how you pay when the power is out, when the network is down, when the terminal will not connect and when the bank left the town a decade ago. The coalition will always stand up for the right of Australians to use cash.