Anthony Miller

The Royal Commission will before any Austrac.

I think, well, certainly being a bank in Australia is still a privileged position.

There's no doubt about it.

Having a banking licence is a real privilege and a bank run well can make a reasonably attractive, sustainable return for its shareholders.

But there's no doubt that the competitive environment, and you call that one really good example, which is in the mortgage business with brokers and the way they are now servicing their customers, has changed the economics of the business.

But that's the consequence of good competition.

That's the consequence of, you know, the environment we're in.

And so it's sort of like cry me a river to worry about what it was and, more importantly, what should it be.

And what we've got to get focused on and what we are focused on is how do we become the best customer-orientated bank, the best customer-orientated company in the country, and in doing that justify the opportunity to charge interest rates, charge fees and deliver product and service to our customers and make a return we need to.

Well, we're certainly making a big effort to get our positioning in regional Australia right.

And one of the things that I acknowledge and we acknowledge at Westpac is that we got that delivery of service into regional Australia wrong.

We did close a few too many branches.

And so, for example, we reopened Moree last year and we're now tomorrow announcing

and visiting Leangatha and we're reopening the branch in Leangatha tomorrow.

So it's part of sort of getting that service proposition right in regional Australia.

We did pull back a little bit too much and we're going to change it.

Not close to any branches in regional Australia.

We continue to work on what's the right model in metropolitan Australia because 96% of what Australians do or what customers do with Westpac is digital or online.

So that's a very significant change in how they think about and use their bank in terms of services and products.

But it is the case that there is a role still for that point of presence in community.