Mr. Larry Broderick:

We would represent the majority of staff. To go back to the other question, I think the industry is going to change. There will not be the same branches we know in every location. The challenge is that there is a debate going on within the industry about what provision is wanted in future. As I said in the submission, cities will have full branches doing the whole lot. Smaller locations will involve some advisory and technology work. There will be other areas where there may not be a presence, so there will have to be a community or mobile bank. It is changing and we are embracing that change. We will have to recognise that. This is not a bleat about things not changing. We absolutely understand that is the nature of the work. Our people are educating and developing themselves to create higher value. International organisations like Accenture and others have said that bricks and mortar will have a role, but more of an advisory role on pensions, investments and development. It is about balance.

At the moment our members are caught not knowing what the future will be. They are trying to deal with change and pressure, but there is no support in place. Going back to the forum and how one deals with this as a community and a country, we must recognise that there will be change. We are ahead of it because we are having those conversations. Two of the main banks are saying they will sit down with us and talk about what the proposition will be in future. It will be different. We are prepared to engage in that provided our members are not facing compulsory redundancy and there are opportunities.

Even in the head office areas there are things called robotics which are changing the nature of support. In the past, staff would do a lot of the centralisation work, but now it is being done by robots or computers. There are challenges on all fronts but there will still be a lot of staff in banking which will still be a key to the economy. While we are in that dynamic stage, we want to see how can we balance that. That is what we want to achieve.