Newsroom

July 20, 2024

KAP Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter says the global CrowdStrike outage demonstrates the urgent necessity of keeping a cash economy alive and the dangers of relying on digital tech.

Mr Katter said it was woefully irresponsible to continue down a digital only pathway and take away cash, thereby, taking away the “choices and freedoms” of a government’s people.

He said there must be efforts made to ensure that all Australians can access and use cash at all times, not just when there are IT outages.

“Take a look at how this most recent event has brought the whole world to a halt!  This a wakeup call that the risk associated with a cashless society is too high for us to pay,” Mr Katter said.

“With cash, we control it, we control how we spend it and save it.

“If we go cashless, we’re giving all our power over to CEOs on millions of dollars who run the banks, and big business and they have the control to make a decision about your money with the click of a button.

“I’m thankful that in my area where we have so many cyclones and power goes out all the time, the people understand the importance of cash and many still use it and accept it as their primary means of payment.

“We’re smart enough to realise we are all buggered when your ‘plastic magic’ doesn’t work!

“We are now left with no other option than to take this fight back to Canberra.

“I intend to introduce legislation to make banks more accountable for scammers, and to ensure that cash is accepted as legal tender across the board, at all times, and not just in a tech outage.

“The CEO cartel has allowed one company to highlight the vulnerability of the world. We must fight back.”