ATMs are set to become a rarity on Australia’s streets

They haven't got the full story below.  What has happened is that the banks have made all their ATMs interoperable.  You can use any ATM to access any bank.  So they have ditched half their ATMs as no longer needed

It has been 50 years since Australia’s first ATM was launched in Sydney, but the once-revolutionary cash dispensers are rapidly becoming a rare breed.

Since peaking at the end of 2016, ATM numbers have been in free fall and now sit closer to 2010 numbers.

Usage has fallen significantly too, with data from the Reserve Bank showing the number of transactions declined 3 per cent in the year to January 2019.

In the past decade, transaction numbers have fallen more than 35 per cent.

Finder insights manager Graham Cooke even warned 2GB’s Chris Smith that ATMs could be phased out within a decade in a June radio show.

Speaking to The New Daily, Swinburne University professor and payments researcher Steve Worthington said the cost of operating an ATM network is become too much for many banks to bother.

“Banks are finding it more expensive to run ATM networks as people have less demand for taking cash out, so they’re withdrawing ATMs from the arena, so to speak,” he said.

Adding to banks woes, more Australians are turning to ‘buy-now-pay-later’ (BNPL) services like Afterpay and Zip Money to make purchases.

These controversial services – which don’t fit the legal definition used by Australia’s National Credit Act but work similarly to some credit products – are becoming increasingly popular with young customers.

And their growing popularity – now used by 9.4 per cent of the population compared with 6.8 per cent last year – is making cash less attractive.

“Why bother using up your cash when you can spread it out over three or four instalments?” Professor Worthington said.

However, Professor Worthington says it’s unlikely Australia will ever be completely free of ATMs, as too many groups – including those living in rural areas, recent migrants, the elderly, and those with disabilities – still rely on cash.

Instead the ATM network will undergo some significant changes – and numbers will continue to fall.

“The banks are gradually moving towards what we call a ‘utility ATM network’, where the ATM is run not by each individual bank but by a third party that provides the cash-filling, repairs and technical support,” Professor Worthington said.

“That would mean you could use any ATM through this utility system.”

Westpac has already sold part of its ATM network to Spanish company Prosegur, and Professor Worthington says others will likely follow suit.

Credit cards also feeling squeezed
At the same time Australia’s appetite for cash has dissipated, our use of credit cards has plummeted.

In the past month alone, more than half a million credit cards were cancelled in Australia, which financial services comparison site RateCity noted is the largest monthly decline in recorded history.

That’s part of a broader trend in which usage dropped about 3 per cent in the past year, data by research house Roy Morgan has shown.

Over the past decade, Australia’s total real credit card debt has reduced from $8 billion in 2007 to around $7 billion today, the data found.

“This drop is unprecedented,” RateCity research director Sally Tindall said.

While there are a number of likely reasons for the massive drop off – including savers cutting up their cards “to get their home loan application across the line” – Ms Tindall said the shift to BNPL services is likely the biggest driver.

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Greens are slammed over extraordinary claims firefighters battling Australia's devastating blazes will return home to BASH their partners

More proof that Greenies live in cloud cuckoo land (with apologies to Aristophanes)

A domestic violence advocate has been blasted over claims firefighters trying to bring Australia's bushfire crisis under control will return home to beat their partners.

Greens Senator Larissa Waters held a press conference on Wednesday where domestic violence advocate Sherele Moody made the extraordinary claim. 'After a cataclysmic event like this, domestic violence peaks,' Ms Moody said on Wednesday afternoon as Senator Waters watched on. 'Women become extremely unsafe when, generally, the men return home from the fires and subject them to domestic violence.'

Ms Moody, the head of the Red Heart Campaign against domestic violence, took to Facebook to double down on her claims. 'What happens when domestic violence perpetrators finish their work on the frontline of a major crisis? They abuse women in their lives - harder than they ever have,' she wrote. 'I am not saying every firefighter, emergency service responder or victim of this crisis is a perpetrator.'

The Greens are now distancing themselves from Ms Moody after widespread backlash.

'Such a shocking, shocking statement to make ... You have just insulted every firefighter in Australia, and that I could never forgive or forget, just unbelievable,' one woman wrote on Facebook.

'This is how radical greens party are and what they stand for, they have no shame insulting Australian heroes (firefighters) saving homes in NSW in last couple days and in QLD in coming days,' another said.

'I'm totally disgusted by this, the bulk of firefighters regardless of being paid or volunteer do so to serve their community which requires a very special mindset of care which is not comparable with this disturbing statement,' another wrote.

A statement from Senator Waters said the party 'does not support the statement made today by Sherele Moody that firefighters are responsible for an increase in domestic violence during times of disaster'. 'Ms Moody is not affiliated with the Greens and does not speak for us,' the statement read.

'Today's press conference with Senator Waters was held to receive a petition regarding the Family Law Inquiry.' 'Ms Moody chose to make comments regarding matters unrelated to the press conference without our prior knowledge.'

Ms Moody claimed evidence from the aftermath of the deadly Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009 suggested women 'experienced an increase in violence from their partners' after such disasters. She cited work from Dr Debra Parkinson, who spoke to women following the Black Saturday fires, and called for governments to respond to the 'heightened' risk.

But Dr Parkinson told Seven News that although she did find an increase in family violence in fire-affected communities, she did not say it was about firefighters.

When this was brought up to Senator Waters, she said: 'We note the research that violence increases during times of disasters.' 

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Foreign hack 'wake-up call' prompts overhaul to combat foreign interference at universities

Australian universities will adopt new guidelines to try and combat the threat from "unprecedented" levels of foreign interference.

Education Minister Dan Tehan described a sophisticated cyber attack on the Australian National University, which has not been attributed to any one country, as a "big wake-up call" for the sector.

He said the guidelines would strengthen cyber security and intelligence sharing between universities and the Government.

They also place more responsibility on universities to understand exactly who they are collaborating with and what their research is used for.

"It can be difficult but you can put intellectual property requirements around what that end use should be, and you can also make sure that if you've done the due diligence you understand what the links might be between that professor and certain other institutions in a country, which then might bring up red flags," Mr Tehan said.

"And that's when the collaboration and co-operation kicks in because then can raise those concerns with Government agencies and they might say look, we don't think that that is the type of research that you should be undertaking."

Inside a massive cyber attack on the Australian National University that risks compromising high-ranking officials across the globe.

The announcement follows concerns about the links between Australian universities and the development of mass surveillance and military technologies in China.

Some Government backbenchers have also warned that universities are not doing enough to combat China's influence on campuses.

The guidelines were developed in conjunction with the university sector.

Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said most of the guidelines were already being implemented.

"This is just a way of putting them all down in a list so that they can be handily and readily accessed by university staff so they can go through the whole list, just to question themselves," she said.

"Universities know very, very clearly that this this is an increasingly complex world and we need to deploy everything we have at our fingertips to make sure that universities and the research inside universities, the students and staff, are as safe as they can be."

Mr Tehan said the guidelines would be reviewed in the middle of next year.

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They're still after archbishop Hollingworth

It sealed his downfall when John Howard made him governor general.  His only fault was insisting on proper evidence rather than immediately believing a sex abuse complaint

A federal senator has proposed new laws that could strip former governor-general Peter Hollingworth of millions of dollars in public benefits over his mishandling of sex abuse complaints in the Anglican church.

West Australian Greens senator Rachel Siewert will today introduce a private member's bill that would allow a minister or parliament to axe vice-regal pensions over "serious misconduct" in or out of office.

Abuse survivor groups have long lobbied to end Commonwealth payments to Dr Hollingworth — who receives up to $600,000 a year — despite his stint as governor-general ending in disgrace after less than two years.

Dr Hollingworth was forced to quit in 2003 after controversy around his response to sex abuse claims while Archbishop of Brisbane, which included allowing a paedophile priest to work through to retirement.

A royal commission has since found when Dr Hollingworth was governor-general in 2002, he knowingly misled a church-sponsored inquiry about his knowledge of the extent of sexual abuse by a priest.

Beth Heinrich, whose account of a sexual relationship with an Anglican priest who sexually abused her from the age of 15, led in part to Dr Hollingworth's downfall, said the Government should end his "undeserved pension".

"I think it's long overdue — I've been waiting for it for years," she said. "It's a disgrace. He was forced to resign in disgrace, he was there as governor-general for less than two years.

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 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here