Liberals, Nationals join Labor in war on cash
- Dale Webster
- 20 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 3 hours ago
IN a stunning act of betrayal, the Liberal and National parties have back-flipped on a commitment made in the Senate just seven days earlier and voted with Labor to scuttle a motion that would have relegated the Government’s problematic cash mandate regulations to history.
Instead, a legal instrument that falls well short of community expectations, does nothing to help the majority of regional Australia and even has the potential to accelerate the demise of cash remains in place.
One Nation, the Greens, Independent David Pocock, United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet and Liberal Alex Antic, who crossed the floor to vote for the motion, all agreed Australia was better off without these flawed regulations than with them.
However, despite Liberal Senator Slade Brockman setting out the reasons the Coalition would support a disallowance motion put by One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts on March 24, Senator Michaelia Cash stood up last Tuesday and, speaking for both the Liberals and National parties, ridiculed the proposal and accused One Nation of trying to “ban cash”.
It was the same line used by Labor senators who engaged in filibustering on the previous Tuesday to time out the debate when One Nation had the numbers to pass the motion.
The vote was lost 28 to 17.
Tasmanian independent Tammy Tyrrell sided with the Government.
Senator Cash, most of her Liberal colleagues and all the Nationals, including leader Matt Canavan, disappeared from the chamber before the vote was held, leaving Labor with the majority.
Understanding the motion
Far from wanting to “ban cash” as Labor and Senator Cash mischievously claimed during the debate, One Nation lodged the disallowance motion in response to calls from cash advocates.
Why was it cash advocates calling for the mandate to be scrapped and not retailers?
Because the retail lobby had pulled off a very sweet deal.
The cherry on the top was that the immediate effect of the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Cash Acceptance) Regulations 2025 (introduced on January 1 this year, without the decision having been taken to parliament) was to remove responsibility for refusing cash from retailers.
As Senator Roberts argued, “instead of having to front their customers and explain why they no longer accept cash, they can simply blame the government”.
Retailers are also happy because the regulations only apply to a miniscule cohort of businesses and come with exceptional circumstance clauses that will exempt even more.
How miniscule is this cohort?
Let’s unpack it.
A “cash guarantee” being sought by cash advocates would protect the right of Australians to pay for all good and services with physical currency. This includes all retailers and key service areas including healthcare, utilities, transport and telecommunications.
The Government’s cash mandate only covers goods.
Of goods, it covers just groceries and fuel.
Of groceries and fuel, it covers just those purchased from big businesses earning more than $10 million per year.
As of June 2024, only 1.9 per cent of Australian businesses fell into this bracket (50,854 businesses) and of these just 562 were supermarkets and grocery stores and 502 fuel retailers (2.09 per cent of 1.9 per cent.)
This equates to 0.04 per cent of all Australian businesses being covered by these regulations.
That is before exemptions are factored in.
Treasury confirmed in Senate Estimates in December that supermarkets and fuel retailers that would otherwise have to comply with the regulations could be eligible for exceptional circumstances exemptions if located in an area without banking services.
The greatest impact of this will be felt across regional Australia’s banking deserts.
According to the Bureau of Statistics, 2.3 million people – 9.7 per cent of the population – were living in just over 1700 “small” (under 10,000 people) towns at the time of the 2016 Census.
Just under 700 of these towns have never had a bank; another 600 have lost all banks, meaning that less than a quarter of towns with populations under 10,000 will be offered any protections by the cash mandate. (In case you are wondering about Bank@post, those seeking exemptions will be quick to point out that cash access through post offices is not a guaranteed service and is unreliable.)
Many of the supermarkets and fuel retailers who successfully apply for an exemption due to the cost of maintaining cash service in towns without a bank will come out of the 0.04 per cent of businesses covered by the regulations.
That leaves all service providers and less than 99.96 per cent of retailers being able to tell consumers that the Government has exempted them from having to accept cash. (Including all retailers in most Aboriginal communities.)
This will have a cascading effect.
Any business refusing to take cash payments contributes to the erosion of cash access (everything that makes a cash economy work, including cash transit) and takes Australia closer to being cashless, a state that is almost impossible to find a way back from, as Sweden is discovering.
The disallowance motion recognised that no mandate at all would be better than the situation we have been left with.
The betrayal
When the disallowance motion was put to the Senate on March 24, Senator Brockman stated the Coalition would be supporting it on the grounds that Labor’s regulations had been hatched in secrecy, fell short of international standards and did not respond to critical issues highlighted in the Senate inquiry into regional bank closures.
When Senator Cash took up the debate a week later, she spoke as if she either didn’t understand the details of the issue or didn’t care.
The Coalition had clearly sold its vote in the interim and Senator Cash had become a mouthpiece for the Government, unleashing a spectacular display of gaslighting as she claimed exactly as Labor’s Corinne Mulholland had the week before to be defending the “1.5 million Australians who use cash for more than 80 per cent of their in-person transactions”.
It may have had a bit more credibility had she not been pulling clown faces and smirking at someone sitting in the Government side of the house as she spoke.
When Senator Cash resumed her seat, instead of turning to her colleagues, she looked straight to the Government side of the house again, gave a namaste gesture of thanks, mouthed a few words and began to giggle.
Senator Cash offered no reason for the broken promise but did flag that the Liberals and Nationals would be putting up a private senator’s Bill to address the issue.
This signaled that the backflip was more to do with politics and not wanting to be seen supporting One Nation, which has been eclipsing the Coalition in opinion polls, than a genuine desire to help the ordinary Australian.
Senator Nick McKim of the Greens said the proposed Bill was just a ruse to let the Government "off the hook".
“We all know what's going to happen there. If it's a decently drafted bill … it will get through the Senate, and do you know what's going to happen then? It's going to go down into the House, and it's going to die a miserable, lonely death down there. It will never be brought on for debate, because the Government has the numbers down there, so it will never become law.
“What you could have done was vote for this disallowance today and force the Government back to the table to bring in an appropriate mandate on cash, one that was far more broad in scope than the one that they're currently proposing … that’s why the Government has been let off the hook.
“Senator Cash can spare the chamber her crocodile tears and handwringing about cash, because the very reason that cash is not going to be mandated for things like data, communication services and energy bills is that the Liberals backed down and squibbed it today.”
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