Australians are losing more than $1 billion a year to debit and credit card scammers and electronic thieves, causing more and more Clarence Valley ratepayers and others to ask why the Federal Government is urging the country towards a cashless society.
Research undertaken by the CV Independent has revealed that many Clarence Valley bank card holders cannot understand why this “convenient banking” is being favoured while it continues to be open slather to criminals’ intent on stealing their hard-earned monetary assets.
Official State law enforcement records also show that only about one per cent of the vast number of bank card incidents reported throughout Australia each year result in a prosecution.
Medical records also indicate that 77.3 per cent of identity theft victims are experiencing serious emotional distress.
Two Queensland local councils have already felt the brunt of public opposition to their efforts to adopt cashless society policies in their areas.
The first one to fall foul of the idea was the Innisfail-centred Cassowary Coast Regional Council which decided last year that bank cards should only be used for transactions.
This move against the use of cash caused a major protest more recently by over 3,000 angry ratepayers and over 1,000 tourists and travellers.
Cairns Regional Council was also forced to urgently overturn a decision to go cashless after suffering a series of rallies by the district’s residents.
In addition, Twitter on the Internet also carried calls endorsed by 62,000 viewers for shoppers throughout Australia to stop using their bank cards for one week from the third to the tenth day of last month and to deal only in “safer cash.”
The organisers of this move against bank cards, engineered in the interests of greater personal bank account safety, claim that cash must be retained as it is trusted and is the only essentially secure way to spend and budget personal and household monies.
In the words of Dr. Paul Harrison, of Melbourne’s Deakin University, the widespread use of debit and credit cards causes Australian shoppers to spend up to 115 per cent more than they would if they only kept cash in their wallets.
In Sweden – one of the first countries to institute 99 per cent digital banking, the bank card system has already gone off-line on a number of occasions through power losses and machine failures.
Whenever this has occurred, the affected customers have often been left without food and medicines, sometimes for days at a time.
Rural and regional areas, such as our Clarence Valley, have also been left particularly vulnerable because of poor unexpected broadband and mobile phone connections.
Even natural disasters are liable to render normal digital financial systems useless, preventing people from accessing their own money or buying what they need.
Swedish people, angered by such occurrences have pointed out that, if they were ever robbed of cash notes on their person, they would only lose a very limited number of their krona currency but, when their bank cards get scammed, they are liable to lose their life savings.
They also point to various economic studies that the widespread use of cash also aids the prosperity of local businesses in regional areas as it tends to discourage the buying of goods on the Internet from city-based or foreign companies away from their own communities.
Some Swedish shops which went 100 per cent cashless last year, found that they lost over 20 per cent of their trade and were forced to change their card-only decisions.
Although Sweden found that abandoning cash helped to reduce some theft and fraud, data and cybersecurity criminals have reportedly continued to breach most established Swedish bank card security systems.
Studies undertaken in Europe on the effectiveness of a cashless society warn that this system seriously discriminates against 25 per cent of people who are left behind by a transition to digital only transactions.
Most members of this group are retirees who experience difficulty in using bank cards or are without mobile phones or computers. And, as all readers know, retired people are very well represented by number throughout the Clarence Valley Council area.
While many Clarence Valley people are seriously concerned about the Federal Government’s threat to create a cashless society, they are also at present under serious and growing pressure over their rising personal and household costs.
Research undertaken by the CV Independent shows that people here and elsewhere in Australia are feeling they are also under siege by cost pressures from power companies, rental property owners, fuel distribution outlets, home insurers, some middle-men grocery suppliers and possibly Clarence Valley Council as a result of the recent steep residential land valuations affecting this year’s Council rates.
Almost all of the people spoken to have pointed to the fact that the prices now being placed on electricity, home and holiday rentals, family car fuels and even basic and essential foods have exceeded their pre-pandemic budgets by any amount up to 48 per cent while incomes have been almost static. These family householders have, however, expressed dismay over Government claims that the official cost of living index wavers around only 7 per cent.
They cannot understand why there is such a gap between reality in the Clarence Valley and Canberra’s quoted figures.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, inflation has
Nationally increased accommodation and travel expenses by 7.3 per cent, electricity by 14.1 per cent, food and non-alcoholic beverages by 7.9 per cent and medical services by 6.7 per cent.
In contrast to this, Clarence Valley dwellers are receiving power company letters advising them of power increases of anything from 25 to 300 per cent in some cases where former cost benefits have been summarily withdrawn.
During the couple of months, all ratepayers have been faced with letters from the N.S.W. Valuer-General, telling them that their land valuations have generally doubled or trebled in recent years with the omen that Council rates may soon go up in sympathy.
There is little doubt in the minds of many CV Independent readers that high national inflation, combined with stagnating incomes and insecure, or only casual working jobs, is causing many people to struggle to pay for essential needs and utilities.
Recent rises in official interest rates and supply and demand issues in the Clarence Valley property market from the pandemic days have also pushed up housing accommodation costs to levels out of the reach of many younger people and full pensioners.
Judging from the price of median house rentals, people wishing to rent properties in the Clarence Valley are now paying an average of between 25 and 35 per cent more each week compared to 2021. By comparison, the Government’s official statistics put this figure at only 6.3 per cent.
The Bureau of Statistics does, however, admit that bread prices have risen 12.8 per cent, dairy 15.1 per cent, manufactured food products 11.5 per cent but it shows that rents nationally are only now 6.3 per cent higher, very different from the Clarence Valley experience. The inflationary prices of new homes nationally are also currently detailed as being only 8.3 per cent higher.
As the present cost-of-living situation throughout the Northern Rivers region is the main matter of concern among residents and visitors alike, the CV Independent invites its many readers to write a letter to the editor, describing their experience in coping with the current inflationary headache now being suffered by so many locally.
$ Budgeting an Answer
A recent study by the CV Independent into the threat of a national cashless society and the implications of continued increases in the cost-of-living has highlighted the fact that many people do not regularly draw up a personal or household budget.
Our study also previously dealt with warnings that the use of
Electronic bank cards are too open to personal money being stolen by scammers and can also lead to higher transaction costs and possible overspending on impulse.
It also brought to the fore how the cost of individual food items, rents and services have been making a dent in working people’s weekly earnings and in pensions for the elderly, who comprise over a quarter of the Clarence Valley population of 50,671 men, women and children.
According to the Australian Council of Social Services, one person in eight is currently living below the poverty line and there is no reason why this figure does not apply to the Clarence Valley. Overall, there are over three million financially stressed family members in Australia across our population of 24 million.
Interestingly enough, an estimated 37 per cent of those families now living in poor financial circumstances are from wage-earning households, as shown by official Government statistics.
But this newspaper does not believe that all is doom and gloom throughout our Valley. Instead, there is every indication that, in spite of our biting national inflation, a great deal can be achieved by regular personal and family household budgeting and pre-planned shopping.
Our research and contacts with family financial agencies has
Highlighted the need for more people to:
* Be more proactive in carefully studying one’s real needs.
* Buying only what is essential to health and happiness.
* Planning meals for a week ahead, using a list to ensure you only buy specific items and amounts.
* Switching to less expensive or cheaper providers of goods and services. (Available statistics show that 60 per cent of people are still buying the same most expensive telephone and electric power deals available instead of being more financially discriminatory. Utilities are also the most easy of organisations to deal with in switching accounts and, hopefully, on which to secure savings.)
* Looking for all available grocery specials from different outlets, understanding that discounted items may not be the least expensive.
* Buying in bulk where possible but only for those food items that you genuinely need and will use within their use-by date.
* Shopping in those stores offering ‘own brand’ products as long as the prices of these items are competitive.
* Considering switching from certain fresh – but perishable foods to frozen brands where there is less likelihood that you will have to throw out anything becoming spoiled or inedible over time.
* Carefully comparing prices between competitive shops and service providers.
* Reducing unnecessary electric power consumption by turning off, at the wall plug, all unnecessary lights and appliances, remembering that electric kitchen aids have a lower working cost than gas-fired ones.
* If you have a home mortgage, contact your bank or financial
Institution each new fiscal year to seek a rate reduction or other benefit. (Banks have estimated that the average home loan borrower today is paying $12,601 a year more to service a mortgage since the start of multiple interest rate hikes three years ago.)
* Putting any savings, you may have to work for you. (This may include any monies lying idle or in low interest bank or building society accounts.
Many of these suggestions above may sound like old hat but the CV Independent survey found that very few people are troubling to budget their finances or, at least, sticking to their buying decisions.
Any readers with more practical ideas or suggestions on how to save money in the present economic climate are welcome to write a letter to the editor for publication and for the information of those possibly seeking more assistance.