This incident serves as a reminder for companies and governments to ensure they have manual redundancies in place to maintain continuity and resilience during technological failures.
The Australian Citizens Party (ACP) says the lesson from the event is that the ultimate manual redundancy in case of system failure is cash.
“Cash is king,” ACP Research Director Robert Barwick declared, “but the banks have been working very hard to overthrow the king.”
“In 2019 the Morrison government tried to do the banks’ dirty work for them by banning cash transactions over $10,000, but was forced to back off by an enormous public backlash.”
“Yet since then, the banks themselves have tried to force us to go cashless by taking away access to cash—closing thousands of branches and ripping out tens of thousands of ATMs.”
“This outage should anger every Australian, because it should never have been this disruptive.”
“Technology is great, but there’s no universe in which it can never be disrupted. Yet the banks and other corporations have deliberately forced people into complete digital dependence without caring about the consequences.”
“The banks have set us up for disaster—they have plunged us into a digital dystopia.”
The ACP is calling on all Australians to demand Parliament pass Independent MPs Andrew Gee and Bob Katter’s Keeping Cash Transactions in Australia Bill 2024, which will make it unlawful for businesses not to accept cash payments (up to $10,000 and with some reasonable exceptions).
“We’ve been conned by the banks to accept cashless businesses, and this is a wake-up call,” Robert Barwick said.
“There should be no more cashless businesses, full stop.”
“Cash is not only legal tender, it is the most reliable medium for transacting under all conditions, including natural disasters, power failures and digital outages.”
“Almost 188,000 Australians have signed Jason Bryce’s Change.org petition for ‘A Cash and Banking Guarantee’, and it’s time the government delivered.”
Read also: LPO Group petition advocates for expanded post office services
Barwick explained that the one problem with requiring businesses to accept cash payments is they need to be able to bank their cash, which the banks have made very difficult by closing so many branches.
Australia Post is also making it difficult, by closing so many post offices.
Small businesses now have to travel much further to make basic deposits and withdrawals essential to running a business.
Barwick noted that the recent Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia had castigated the banks for closing so many branches, and had recommended the government appoint an expert panel to investigate establishing a public bank, including the model of a public bank that operates in post offices.
“A public post office bank is the solution that the Australian people should demand”, Barwick said.
“There are 4,271 post offices in Australia—more than all bank branches combined—and every one could be a branch of a new government bank that guarantees face-to-face banking services and access to cash.”
“The competition will force the Big Four banks to lift their game and start serving their customers properly.”
“And the revenue from banking will fund the postal network and stop Australia Post closing post offices.”
“It’s a win-win solution that Friday’s digital outage proves is necessary.”
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