The notion that businesses can operate fully cashless is spreading quickly across our modern society, which is what has prompted the owners of The Birdhouse to proclaim they will operate on that basis in future.

This total dependence on technology to conduct a business is rather brave, to say the least, if you consider the regular interruptions to secure transactions via the current systems.

A simple blackout halts most businesses' ability to trade.

Given the ever increasing reliance on renewables with intermittent supply security, blackouts will be more common.

Just recently severe storms across southern Australia widely disrupted electronic transactions. Sometimes for days.

Tills could not be unlocked, so businesses couldn't trade.

People who "never carry cash these days" were lined up at the rare ATM they could find within reasonable distance, to get cash out just for their lunch money.

And banks have been removing ATMs faster than they have been closing bank branches in rural areas.

A couple of years ago, a major fire in an electricity sub-station in western Victoria led to a complete loss of access for all types of business transactions.

Across an area of some hundreds of kilometres, many small and medium-sized towns were bereft of all transactional services, along with internet and phone contact. It took a month to restore services.

How long did it take to repair systems across the areas affected by bushfires in the Black Summer fires?

We are constantly told there will be more, and more intense, bushfires in the future.

So how does our society ensure communications and businesses are able to function under that predicted regime?

And how would our ultramodern business owners cope?

COVID-19 has made cashless transactions a major part of daily life for all of us.

But I don't see cash disappearing soon.

And what will the kiddies do? No piggy bank to save up for treats or major items, to learn the reality of money, costs and effort to achieve goals.

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It's high time our government paid more attention to people like South Coast bushfire survivor Jo Dodds, who attended the COP26 climate summit as a representative of Bushfire Survivors For Climate Action ("Putting a human face on the climate crisis", November 8).

Frustrated with the lack of government action to reduce emissions, this group has recently taken legal proceedings.

This year's IPPC report states that we need to take decisive steps to phase out pollutants in the next decade, if we are to keep global heating below dangerous levels.

Yet our federal government continues to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars to subsidise the coal and gas industries.

For the government to knowingly ignore the facts on climate change, is deliberate negligence.

Is it any wonder that climate litigation is becoming more commonplace?

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