Mr. Kevin Johnson:

While credit unions cannot solve all the problems Deputy Fitzmaurice outlined, we are very well positioned and willing to contribute to meeting many of the needs that exist. This type of discussion is useful because it helps us to understand some of the needs which, perhaps, are not being met. In my opening remarks, I outlined our vision for credit unions. To condense and summarise that, it is really for the local credit union to be the financial hub of a community. That is really what we are trying to do. It was interesting to listen to Senator Reilly talk about his visit to Germany. He might well have been talking about a visit to any credit union.

He could easily have been talking about a tiny credit union. Everything he talked about in terms of knowing individual customers and communities already exists. The concern we have is that there is talk of establishing a new entity, which requires capital investment, licences and infrastructure but it is not actually needed. We have all of the foundations of community banking in the credit union system. That said, while the financial term is "banking", credit unions do not want to be banks. We are credit unions and the one thing we want to ensure is that the regulations and legislation continue to protect our uniqueness. The erosion of that uniqueness is something about which we are concerned. We also want a level playing field. There are other entities out there providing consumer loans through the likes of personal contract plans or store credit, for example. These may appear very convenient to consumers but they are not regulated and do not provide the same level of consumer protection that is provided by credit unions.