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Comment by gst | Hacker News Reader

> Transactions equal to, or in excess of this amount would need to be made using the electronic payment system or by cheque.

Does Australia have a law that guarantees access to a bank account? Or would this proposed limitation imply that people who can't get a bank account for various reasons aren't allowed to transact anymore?

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Only 1% of Australians are fully excluded from financial services (no transaction account, no credit card, no general insurance)[1]. I doubt this law will have much of an impact on that small population.

[1]According to this report from 2013/2014: https://www.nab.com.au/content/dam/nabrwd/documents/reports/...

1% of Australians is still 246,000 people.

More than I would have expected. The report is long; was there a breakdown provided of the reasons for this exclusion? I assume that some proportion is voluntary and I wonder how much (and what the other reasons are).

You are being disingenuous by using the 1% figure.

Its actually more like 16% of Australians who cannot access banking services which would allow transactions greater than this imposed $10,000 limit, because General Insurance is a requirement of such limits (imposed by the banks).

There is no such law, at one point the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) was state run but was privatized in 1996.

How often do the people who can't get a bank account for various reasons enter into transactions over $10k?

> How often do the people who can't get a bank account for various reasons enter into transactions over $10k?

I’m guessing the effects would be secondary. If your business serves the unbanked, and receives its revenues in cash, it may be more convenient to pay suppliers with that cash than to deposit it and issue electronic payment. Not sure if that pushes any businesses over the edge, but it’s a factor.

If you're operating a legitimate business maintaining proper accounting records, and dealing with other legitimate businesses who are themselves maintaining records and paying tax, I would guess that it's _still_ much easier to go to the bank and deposit your cash into an account than to pay your bills straight out of your cash.

There are no guarantees but they're not really needed. Australia isn't like the US, we don't have a large population of unbanked people. Banks are usually free, either because you have enough money to make the minimum deposit or because you're low enough income to qualify for a free account. The documents required to open an account [0] are also very basic necessities you'll need to live in general.

And I think practically, there aren't going to be issues here. Where are you storing >$10k if not in a bank? I think the kinds of people paranoid enough to do that aren't going to go around making >$10k financial transactions.

[0]: https://www.commbank.com.au/guidance/consumer-finance/what-d...

>Australia isn't like the US, we don't have a large population of unbanked people.

Yes we do: First-Nation people, who will now be excluded even more from large-property transactions ...

Do you have data to back that up? I had a quick look and couldn't really find anything about them in particular, just this NAB report [0] linked elsewhere in the thread that breaks down by a number of other attributes.

[0]: https://www.nab.com.au/content/dam/nabrwd/documents/reports/...

https://www.fos.org.au/custom/files/docs/ccmc-special-report...

Quote:

"Indigenous Australians are around twice as likely as non-Indigenous Australians to be financially excluded –that is, to lack access to appropriate and affordable banking services and products. "

Too often, Australian Aborigines lack proof of identity:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/aborigines-lack-proof-of-ide...

"MANY Victorian Aborigines are barred from obtaining a driver's licence, voting, opening a bank account and receiving social security benefits because their births were never registered and they officially don't exist."

"The sharing of devices leads to insecure banking, causing some to avoid online banking and Centrelink accounts altogether."

Just one more in a grand litany of incidents where Australian Aborigines are excluded from the society that stole the land from them ..

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