Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll indicate at the beginning that the Liberal and National parties won't be opposing the Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026. It's a bill that does establish a reasonable but belated framework to deal with a change in the competitive cash distribution landscape. Our cash distribution scheme is incredibly important to people who have commerce going throughout Australia, but it's especially important in regional, remote and rural parts of our country, where it can often be very difficult these days to acquire cash in order to get the cash floats required for fairs, school fetes and the like.

There is an increasing shortage of cash, which I'll get to in this contribution. The reason for that shortage is that the market has been shrinking in recent years as electronic forms of payment have increased in popularity. The impact of that is that those countries who distribute the cash through the country were, and still are, under economic strain and pressure. Because of that smaller market, almost three years ago, two of the main players in this space, the main private companies that distribute cash through the country, merged. Armaguard and Prosegur merged to create one entity, and they now cover something shy of 90-odd per cent of the cash distribution market.

As I said, there were economic reasons for that merger: the decrease in the size of the market and the need to create efficiencies to maintain a viable distribution system. In normal circumstances, seeing two entities merge to create a 90 per cent market concentration would raise the hackles of the ACCC, and it may not have been approved. In this case, given the economic difficulties in the market, that merger was approved. However, it was approved with an important condition: that a temporary undertaking be put in place for three years while more permanent regulatory arrangements were being adopted to tackle the situation of such a large entity covering an extremely important part of our economy.

That's why we're here; that's the back story to this. I'd just make the note that this merger occurred. Let me get this right. It was first proposed in June 2023. It was ticked off, or finalised, in September 2023. And, as I said earlier, the temporary undertaking was a three-year process, a three-year framework put in place by the ACCC. So it is a bit late in the day—in August 2026, just a month before the conclusion of this undertaking—that we're finally, in this place, settling the arrangements. Keep in mind that this bill was only presented to parliament, into the House first, a few weeks ago. It's not really clear why this wasn't brought forward a lot earlier, given it's been something we've known about for some time now; it's a bit late in the day.

Just weeks after that merger was confirmed, the stark situation in the marketplace was highlighted with Armaguard approaching the government saying that it needed extra funding—otherwise it would go belly up by Easter of the next year, which was Easter in 2024. Some might recall there was a grave risk that cash would dry up across our country, and Coles paused delivery of cash and put restrictions on cash withdrawals in its shops. That made people face the real prospect of struggling to get cash over a holiday period. And it was that incident which finally caused the Reserve Bank and the government to act and provide a $50 million rescue for Armaguard.

Now we have this overall framework, which does a few things to, hopefully, avoid us getting into that sort of sticky situation unexpectedly again. This bill puts a regulator in charge of the cash distribution system. As I mentioned earlier, a marketplace with 85 to 90 per cent market share certainly puts you into a category where some form of regulation would be wise. There is, in effect, a natural monopoly in this marketplace now. Given the smaller scale of the market and the cost of distributing cash, it really does seem efficient for only one entity, or largely one entity, to conduct that business. That being said, if that one entity were given unfettered power to set their prices and terms, given how important cash is to many businesses, businesses would have very little choice but to accept such terms and conditions. That subsequent market power would be in such imbalance that it could lead to quite inequitable outcomes for those businesses that need cash. So we fully support the establishment of a regulatory regime here to tackle that issue and treat the market like the natural monopoly it now is. Such regulation is not unusual in infrastructure markets where there's a clear monopoly, like ports, airports and railways and the like.

The bill also creates an emergency regime such that, if a cash distributor is at risk of collapsing in the future, there's a process that can be engaged, and that process is similar to what we have in place for banks and insurance companies through the RBA, through APRA and through the general financial market regime. This makes sense because there are concerns this could happen again. I know Armaguard have written to me and others about their concerns about this, but there are these arrangements in place to ensure, in a considered way, that we continue to have viable cash distribution services in Australia. This bill also gives the ACCC the power to require some transparency in pricing and to set service level standards as well, to ensure that they are not compromised as a way of getting around regulation. Normally we would support free enterprise and hope for no regulation. But, as I said, sometimes there is a need for it in circumstances like this.

While this is a positive step—and a belated step, as I've mentioned—that we're happy to support, I would take this opportunity just to point out that this does not solve all of the issues for the use and distribution of cash in our economy. We've got the trucks; hopefully, we'll continue to have the trucks there, and the armoured guards. But they need a place to deliver it, and too many places in regional Australia are now without banks.

In a different role, as chair of the Regional and Rural Affairs and Transport References Committee, I chaired a Senate inquiry on the closure of banks in the last few years. There have been over 800 closures of bank branches since 2022. Our inquiry, which was tripartisan, played a pretty big role, if I can say so, in putting a stop to that. At that time, we saved a dozen branches that were on sale in your great state, Acting Deputy President Ciccone, from closing, as well as many in North Queensland and other places. Also, this process has led to a moratorium on closures of bank branches. That moratorium is due to end, though, next year, so we need to think about what is put in place next. This bill doesn't deal with those issues.

The Senate committee then asked the government to negotiate with the banks or look at finding a funding stream, using the bank levy or other mechanisms, to encourage more banks to be opened and stay open. It looked like the government was very close at one stage to doing that and taking on that recommendation. They eventually settled for the extension of the moratorium, but, given that's coming up in the next year, it's time to revisit this. I would like to see us encourage more banking especially to incentivise those banks and financial institutions that are seeking to work to expand services, and to reward them. It's only fair that all Australians have access to adequate financial services, and as many as possible should have access to good financial services.

The other thing this bill doesn't do is ensure that people can continue to be able to use cash if they can get hold of it, if they have a bank, a branch, and an ATM in their location where they live. There needs to be the ability to use it in store, and we are seeing, increasingly, the threat that some businesses will not take cash. We believe that there should be a degree of mandate here. It needs to be reasonable. Some small businesses shouldn't have this sort of burden placed on them, but larger businesses should be able to continue to take cash and give people the freedom to use that type of payment. I note the government has put in place a cash mandate, but we believe that it doesn't go far enough; it only covers supermarkets and fuel, and only up to $500, and is only between the hours of 7 am and 9 pm. It doesn't cover pharmacies, which seems pretty essential and important. We think it should be expanded.

With that, I will not hold up the Senate any longer. As I said, this should have come before us sooner, so let's get it done. Let's hope we can put in place a framework that maintains a viable cash distribution system for our country.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Canavan, a little birdie tells me you've got a second reading amendment that you might want to move.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) affirms that cash is critical national infrastructure, and that access to cash remains essential for millions of Australians, particularly older Australians and those in regional and remote communities;

(b) notes that when a natural disaster strikes, the power goes out, or communications networks fail, it is cash that keeps working;

(c) expresses concern that the Government has failed to act sooner, noting that:

(i) the risks to the cash distribution system have been evident since the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) approved the Linfox Armaguard Pty Ltd and Prosegur Australia Holdings Limited merger in June 2023,

(ii) by Easter 2024 the system was brought to the brink of crisis, requiring an emergency meeting chaired by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia to secure a rescue package, and

(iii) the Government has acted only in the final weeks before the ACCC's enforceable undertaking expires in September 2026, and that delay has placed the ongoing strength of Australia's cash system at risk; and

(d) expresses further concern about the Government's ongoing failure to address bank branch closures, and its lack of any plan for when the moratorium on regional branch closures ends on 31 July 2027".

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Dowling, welcome back.

Richard Dowling (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's great to be back and talking about cash. It used to be how we paid for pretty much everything. Cash was king, as they say. In 2007, about seven in every 10 payments were cash—pretty significant. Most payments were cash based. Most people in this chamber would remember the cash world. Some of our newer, younger members are probably unfamiliar with it at all, and some of our more experienced members probably grew up in a cash economy entirely.

There's been a rapid evolution of how our payment system works in Australia, and by and large it's worked pretty well. If we compare our system of cash and digital to other economies, we have a stable currency and we also have a digital framework that allows and facilitates the rapid transfer of cash digitally when times require that. We saw it in no better case than when Australia needed to respond through the COVID period and provide people with rapid access to cash; we had that digital infrastructure to support it.

The ecosystem we have works very well in Australia, but, today, cash is used for fewer than two in 10 payments. It was seven in 10 in 2007, but it's fewer than two in 10 today. They're not particularly averaged out; that doesn't really tell the story. The two in 10 are very overrepresented in certain parts of the country. It's a significant shift, and it does present us with a problem, because moving cash costs about the same whether the trucks—the Armaguard vehicles—are full of cash or nearly empty. The cost of moving that cash is the same.

As cash use has fallen, the business of moving it has stopped adding up until the whole job came down to a single national carrier—one carrier moving all of Australia's cash. We know that when a market comes to a single provider it loses the ordinary discipline of competition—competition being the pressure that keeps prices fair and keeps service reliable. With several carriers, the loss of one is a setback that could be absorbed by the others, but, when you only have one, the loss puts the nation's cash at risk. It puts the entire economy at risk. It can put people's lives at risk.

This bill treats cash as what it has quietly become: essential infrastructure. It doesn't just treat it as economic infrastructure but societal infrastructure. That infrastructure has to work for everyone, especially when other things fail. I'm a huge supporter of the digital economy and the future that that digital economy is building, the opportunity it provides and the platform it provides for people to participate and capture new economic opportunities. But I also know what that future does not yet reach. It does not reach the town where the phone signal drops out. It does not reach the checkout when the power goes down in a storm. It does not reach the person the app was never built for. When the digital system fails—and it does fail—cash is the backup that keeps the community going.

We saw it in the last big network outage. The card machines went dark right across the country, and cash was the only thing that still worked. I referred to cash before as 'essential infrastructure'. It's essential emergency infrastructure. While payments in cash today might only be two in 10 payments, when the network was down, cash was 100 per cent of payments. It was cash or nothing.

Making sure the systems people depend on and the backups behind them hold up wherever they live is what the Albanese government is all about. That's true in the cities, but it's just as true, if not more so, in the regions and remote communities. In my home state of Tasmania, that's not just a theory. In less than a decade, Tasmania has gone from 135 bank branches to just 84 bank branches, and the trajectory is clear. No-one is opening new branches. In town after town, the nearest one has become no longer within walking distance. The drive to get to the nearest bank has become further and further. It's not necessarily connected to a public transport route. Access to banking services has become challenging. You see it right across the state.

A stark example is on the remote West Coast of Tasmania, in Queenstown. The last bank on the West Coast, the Bendigo Bank, shut its doors. It was the last one—and it was relied upon. Local businesses did their banking there. Local residents did their banking there. It wasn't just a place where you did transactions; it really became an important touchpoint for the community. It's hard to think that you might talk about a bank in romantic or nostalgic terms, but that's really what it was like for the people on the West Coast in confronting how they would operate in a town with no bank.

I commend the local town's resilience in how they've gone about this challenge and, particularly, the University of Tasmania, which has gone in with a fantastic program around financial literacy, giving residents the confidence and capability to adapt from what they'd taken for granted and what their whole life was—that physical bank infrastructure—to having to move their business or their household finances to a hybrid or an entirely digital experience.

That has been a real challenge. Queenstown's experience is shared by hundreds of communities across Australia that have had to move from a system of entirely face-to-face, largely cash transactions to that hybrid or fully digital experience. It's a similar experience on the east coast of Tasmania at St Helens, where the last branch closed. These are not especially small towns but they are not major cities, and the banks simply cannot find a way to make that stack up.

Roughly one in 10 Australians still use cash for most of what they buy. One in 10 might not sound like much as a statistic, but it's millions of people. Millions of Australians still use cash for most of what they buy. They are more likely to be older, more likely to be on a lower income and more likely to live in the regions. These people deserve absolute consideration, and they must be front and centre when we discuss the payment system and the use of cash in our economy. We shouldn't be distracted by averages. We shouldn't say, 'It's only one in 10.' One in 10 is millions of people who rely on cash.

For them, cash is not simply a preference—it's how they manage. It's how they get by when the power or the network lets them down, which we've seen firsthand too often. As I indicated in my very first speech in this place, I'm a strong believer in financial literacy and financial capability. I'm a strong believer in giving Australians of every age the skills they need to work and take part in a more digital age—giving people the tools, experience and confidence to navigate a modern economy. We live in the most complex digitised economy in the history of the world, yet the skills and capabilities we equip people with haven't kept up. That is a challenge that we must continually confront in this space: how we equip our citizens to navigate through that complexity.

I also understand that, for some people, becoming financially literate and being able to navigate those challenges will not always be possible. Where that isn't possible, our economic infrastructure has to be built to include them and not shut them out. This bill keeps the system that delivers cash working. It gives the Reserve Bank oversight of critical providers and the power to step in if the supply of cash is ever put at risk, and that is absolutely fundamental.

It puts the competition regulator in charge of fair, clear pricing and decent service. As I outlined at the start of this speech, market forces do a very good job where you have a lot of players, a lot of buyers and a lot of suppliers, but we used to have multiple providers in the cash transport business and now we only have one. So it's really critical now that the role the market used to play is now taken on by the competition regulator, to ensure that charge of fair, clear pricing and decent service, and that it does all of this in an orderly way before a collapse, not after one.

The amendments before us make another important point clear: keeping cash moving should not cut across the protections of the people who move it. Road transport contractual chain orders exist to ensure that standards across transport supply chains are safe, sustainable and viable. Again, as we said, when we're in a market that doesn't have strong competition and dominance by certain players in the supply chain, safety, sustainability and viability are not necessarily things we should take for granted, so it's important that those standards are protected with these changes.

Most of the time, these two systems will operate alongside each other without any problem. But, where an obligation under the cash distribution framework would conflict with one of those orders, these amendments provide a clear pathway to resolve it, and that gives certainty to the system about how it will work in times of stress. They make sure that worker protections are preserved. I commend the union movement, particularly the Transport Workers' Union, for making sure that those worker protections are recognised and strongly protected. They give businesses and regulators greater certainty about what their obligations are as well.

This is not some adversarial approach. It actually ingrains a lot more certainty and predictability into the system about how things work, particularly under stress, under pressure, at times of crisis. Importantly, they do this without compromising the Reserve Bank's crisis powers. If the cash distribution system is at risk, the Reserve Bank must still be able to act quickly to keep critical services operating. That is a sensible balance, protecting the workers who keep the cash moving while protecting the system that keeps cash available.

When we think about the payment system and how it operates, you can't look at it through the lens of a single stakeholder. You need to understand that the workers who work in that cash transport and distribution framework need to have their worker protections preserved, but we also need to have an efficient, sustainable business environment for those cash distributors to be able to operate their businesses. Similarly, we need wider economic confidence that, in times of crisis, cash will be available and in times when your telephone doesn't work, when your online banking system isn't working and when your credit card payment networks aren't working, there is still that last resort—cash is king—and we can make sure that the cash is transported to all parts of Australia, particularly those remote, regional places where particularly lower income households and older households have come to rely on cash for their everyday life. Millions of Australians still do the majority of their transactions using cash.

This is a measured answer to a real problem. It's not a step back from the digital future. It is a way of making sure that the future leaves no-one stranded at the check-out. It sits alongside the cash our shops must now accept, and it backs the supply of cash that Tasmanians and Australians rely on every day. Therefore, I support this bill and the amendments.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The fact is cash is king for retailers, sellers and buyers. The Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026 and the Cash Distribution Framework (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026 establish a regulatory framework for Australia's cash distribution system, with a particular focus on the cash-in-transit sector. The government's claimed intention is to support continued access to cash as cash use supposedly declines and the economics of distribution become more difficult, especially in regional and remote areas. Key measures include allowing the Reserve Bank of Australia to designate systematically important cash distribution entities, giving the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission oversight of standard terms, pricing, service agreements, access arrangements and service level standards and creating good faith negotiation, arbitration and dispute resolution mechanisms. The bills introduce crisis readiness and resolution powers so that the Reserve Bank of Australia can intervene if a critical provider becomes financially distressed or services are disrupted. In effect, cash handling is moving from a commercial market service with many providers to critical national infrastructure. One Nation supports this bill.

I would add that a main assumption in this bill is false. The use of cash is not declining. In 2016, when I first started campaigning to protect the use of cash, there was $70 billion of cash in the economy. Today it's $107 billion, a 53 per cent increase in cash. Cash use is now increasing from 13 per cent of transactions in 2022 to 15 per cent today. Around 50 per cent or half of Australians use cash weekly, and seven per cent use cash exclusively. I'll say that again: seven per cent of Australians use cash exclusively. Liberal-Labor uniparty governments have lost their war against cash because half of Australians disagree with ending the use of cash. Thank you, Australia.

Reasons given for moving back to cash include the cost of electronic banking, which was always the plan—eliminate cash, and then banks can charge whatever they damn well like for electronic transaction fees, and consumers will be a captive market. We must keep cash. Secondly, an age-old budgeting trick is making a comeback. Withdraw your budget for the week in cash and, when it's gone, stop spending. Swiping a plastic card encourages people to overspend. This is a measure one wouldn't see making a comeback if everyday Australians were doing well. The truth is that the comeback in cash is directly linked to the cost-of-living crisis and the war on the middle class which the Liberal and Labor uniparty have been perpetrating for a generation.

Increasingly, the use of cash is associated with privacy concerns. We know every purchase you make electronically is logged and then sold into the data market, often called big data. These companies have significant data files on every Australian, so much so that huge data centres are now necessary to keep track of it all and then exploit that data for the benefit of retailers and, of course, for the benefit of the government.

The Australian Banking Association points out the rise in the cash economy. This is a valid point. There is significant use of cash payments in hospitality, among other industries. This is being driven by workers, not employers. I know one employer who advertised for bar staff and had emails from prospective employees asking what the rate per hour was for payment in cash. Foreign students are working their 20 hours legally and then working another 20 for cash. This is facilitating part of the $39 billion a year visa holders send back overseas. Recently, in Senate estimates hearings, I was given answers on this topic which suggested the amount foreign students earn each year was equal to the amount foreign students send overseas each year. So what are foreign students living on? Well, it's obvious: their cash work and tax avoidance, adding GST to their subcontractor invoices and then shooting through before the ATO, the Australian Taxation Office, can catch up with them.

I acknowledge that cash can facilitate a black economy, yet the answer isn't getting rid of cash; it's getting rid of the black economy. All of these things could be policed if the government really wanted to. It's chosen not to. Both this government and the previous Liberal government chose not to get rid of the black economy.

I note the bill does not explicitly mention Australia Post outlets or Bank@Post. It really should have included a statement of support for providing cash handling to post offices. Australia's banking oligopoly, banking cartel, has badly served the bush. Local post offices are the last source of cash services for retail outlets in many rural and regional areas. The regulatory powers created in this bill must be used to mandate cash handling ATMs in areas that banks or post offices do not properly service so that business can still operate.

Banks should earn their social licence to operate. In many ways direct and indirect, taxpayers protect the banks, and government favours increase bank profits and lower the risks banks face. Major banks today socialise losses and privatise profits. When things are going well, they're private. When things are going badly, they want help from the government. In return, banks should fulfil adequate services, including provision of legal tender, cash.

This Labor government continues the uniparty policy of hollowing out the bush, replacing farmland with industrial solar and wind installations and transmission lines to feed power to their city voter base. Part of that is the policy of turning agricultural land into a wasteland in the name of carbon dioxide credits, wind turbines and solar panels. As one of many examples for proof, look up Rushy Lagoon, Tasmania, which the Senate is debating. It's 11,000 hectares of prime farmland turned into a pine plantation for carbon dioxide credits—for rubbish. Shame on you. You use taxpayer money to help these foreigners do it. You gave grants to yourself—grants to government entities.

Australia's banks have been actively supporting the uniparty government's agenda to hollow out the regions, removing regional cash and banking services. This bill will provide a mechanism to restore the viability of cash handling in the bush, but I'm not convinced the government means a word of it. One Nation welcomes this new framework that we can use to restore cash handling in regions once we get into government.

Armaguard is concerned about costs imposed in the bill making cash deliveries too expensive. This will result if the cost of regional cash services is charged on a cost-recovery basis. Banks, though, do not use cost recovery. They average operating costs across all their products. Yes, the city will pay for cash handling in rural regions. The bush though, right now, pays for the heightened cost of security in our crime ridden cities, the multiple armed guards on cash deliveries, the in-branch security and in-branch translation language services not needed in rural regions.

Banks spend way more advertising in the city to get customers, whereas, when a bank has the only branch in town, that bank does not need to spend money advertising. In the growing number of regional towns with no bank, banks have no branch costs and simply give Australia Post licenced post offices a cheap fee to act as agent for the bank. By the way, the large majority of our country's export income and wealth comes from the rural regions, from the bush. Don't tell them in the bush they're sponging off the cities. It's the city's sponging off the bush.

The Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026 allows the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to require Armaguard-Prosegur to provide access to their depots for smaller operators, while noting these operators already access their depots. This provision is actually not really new. Nonetheless, protecting access rights in legislation is useful, so thank you. Potential market entrants into the cash-handling market, such as NCR, expressed support for this provision. The Bills Digest discusses concentration of industry power in the hands of the merged Armaguard-Prosegur entity. This bill may create barriers to entry for new or smaller entities and thereby serve to cement the Armaguard-Prosegur monopoly. It's a fair point, although, once again, it goes to use of the powers in this bill not the creation of those powers.

One power I am worried about, though, is the crisis-funding provision in the bill. Part 6 and 7 allow the Reserve Bank to declare a cash-handling emergency and may authorise up to $400 million in assistance to provide continuity of service while taking action that could include appointing an administrator. My concern is this provision can be triggered on a very low bar. One trigger provided in clause 90 is simply the entity asking for the money and the Reserve Bank of Australia deciding that, if the payment is not made, their operations may become unviable.

From the very start, One Nation and I have been champions of the use of cash and critics of the banking cartel. In 2017, I was successful in creating the Senate Select Committee on Lending to Primary Production Customers, which I chaired, or rather, I should say, Senator Pauline Hanson was successful in creating the Senate select committee and appointed me as chair. The inquiry investigated unconscionable bank lending practices, default interest rates and predatory foreclosure behaviours that ripped off and traumatised Australian farmers and rural families and fishermen and loggers during periods of drought or financial hardship. Our inquiry found so much banking misconduct that Prime Minister Turnbull, at the time, was forced to call the royal commission into financial services that found widespread systemic corruption.

Then the Morrison government tabled the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill 2019, which was to introduce a $10,000 limit on cash transactions. When such provisions were introduced overseas, the $10,000 limit was quickly reduced. Greece now has a limit of 500 euros. France and Germany have a limit of 1,000. One Nation led the campaign against this obvious attempt to get rid of cash and force the public into the electronic banking system for the financial benefit of the banking cartel. They get to charge fees, and there's no alternative. Despite Liberals and Labor passing the bill through the House of Representatives, we were successful, in December 2020, in removing the bill from the Senate Notice Paper. It didn't go through the Senate. The banking cartel, though, did not give up.

Recently, the Treasurer introduced the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Cash Acceptance) Regulations 2025. This regulation destroyed the legal basis for cash. How? Very cleverly. It required only petrol stations and supermarkets to accept cash. Everything else did not have to accept cash. Petrol and supermarkets only had to accept up to $500 in cash and only between 7 am and 9 pm, so it was a furphy. That meant every other business—and every business, from 9 pm to 7 am—was not legally required to accept cash. The government justified this measure as guaranteeing cash, which was fundamentally a lie.

Since Federation, the start of our country, cash has been legal tender. Businesses can only refuse cash in a narrow set of circumstances. The Albanese regulation was deceitfully designed to provide air cover for any business that wanted to move to card-only payment. That's the real aim—to get rid of cash. This is the reason I'm suspicious of the motives the government has in preparing this bill. The uniparty government has now tried three times to get rid of cash. In the hands of a One Nation government, this bill, though, will create a fair environment for the free market to thrive and for consumers to win.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) | Link to this | Hansard source

I feel well versed and well qualified to talk about cash and the economy, having run a significant-size multistore retail operation in Queensland. I take note of so many of the points that have been made in this debate, though I will call out One Nation taking credit for the removal of the government's bill on cash as being complete fantasy. But, that aside, cash is not an outdated relic of the past. It is a significant part of our economy. It's legal tender, and it's particularly important for parts of the world that are offline, that don't have internet connection or wi-fi coverage, that need to be able to transact.

I think, most recently, of the Quamby Rodeo, where a significant amount of cash was taken—more than a significant amount—in order to allow that community to enjoy gathering together and the buying of drink tickets, food and so forth. It is only with the opportunity that cash provides that that can still go ahead. I was more recently in Richmond when the Telstra mobile tower failed, and vendors were unable to make transactions because the EFTPOS machines and terminals didn't work. Of course, there's the bigger example of floods and cyclones, where right across Queensland, certainly, we have examples of where there is no digital ability to transact. For those reasons, these requirements to be able to receive cash and to use it are absolutely critical. Certainly, in north and far western Queensland, people are quite used to having to store an amount of cash in order to get through those sorts of natural disasters, whether it be for fuel or food.

I notice, though, that this legislation, the Cash Distribution Framework Bill 2026, has a massive oversight in not allowing for medicines to be paid for using cash. And, of course, the matching part of this debate is not just the ability of people to get cash out but how we manage the requirement for business to take it. Despite cash being legal tender, there are many businesses that are now trying not to take cash at all—and I have some sympathy. You have to have an arrangement that's secure, to be able to get cash from your premises to a bank, and that—

Debate interrupted.