Mr. Tim Molan:

I will answer the question asked by Senator Grace O'Sullivan. What we are talking about is financial services. It is very important to go back to the issue of sustainability. To sustain, it is not possible to be just a one trick pony in respect of financial services. There has to be a balanced portfolio and it has to meet the balance of needs in a rural community. This balance of needs includes micro-lending, small and medium enterprise lending and lending for personal needs. Personal needs include home improvement which sustains other micro-industries and small businesses in the form of builders, etc., that form part of the community.

We hope we are talking about having sustainable financial services located in local communities. There will be a spin-off. If 1,000 or 2,000 people are dealt with in an office in the course of a week, they will buy a newspaper and whatever else that needs to be bought in the shop next door. A balance must be struck. Returning to my earlier point, one issue is being missed here. My colleague spoke about the high level of refusals and so forth. These are symptoms, rather than causes. The causes include the insufficient assistance available to enterprise and new business. There are wonderful local enterprise offices, LEOs, and whatever else out there. One practical step would be to have more joined up conversations between those who have members' savings that we want to lend out and those who can enable enterprising individuals to go in a particular direction. In the next week and until the end of January, we will see significant public accountability in halls around the country when the credit unions hold their annual general meetings. It will be shown that all of us are governed by volunteer directors such as Mr. Murphy who are elected on behalf of members. I respectfully suggest that we already have local public financial services organisations. They are willing to get in and do the job. We also have staff and infrastructure in place and another difference is that, unlike some other financial institutions whose arrival was heralded some years ago but whose departure was perhaps less signalled, credit unions do not go away. The banks are a little like migratory swallows in that they sometimes come back, but at least swallows have consistency.