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Announcing our new Reconciliation Action Plan

Announcing our new Reconciliation Action Plan

16 Jul 2018

We’re delighted to announce the launch of Bank Australia’s fourth Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).

Our new RAP represents the next step on our journey towards reconciliation between the wider Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It’s also our first ‘Stretch’ level RAP – an advanced plan for businesses that have a strong track record of implementing meaningful and measurable initiatives to advance reconciliation.

Our new RAP will span the next three years, from 2018-2021, and reflects our ambitions to extend and build upon the past eight years of achievements and learnings we’ve experienced under our three previous plans.

Since launching our first RAP in 2011, we’ve recruited 13 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff into our financial services traineeship program, we’ve raised awareness about reconciliation and the rich histories, cultures and spiritualties of our First Peoples through staff and customer engagement, and we’re provided scholarships to 20 emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders through the Bank Australia Impact Fund. We’ve also integrated Traditional Owner knowledge into managing our cornerstone environmental project, the Bank Australia Conservation Reserve.

We’re proud of these achievements but we know we must do more.

Our new RAP sets out our ambitions to elevate the voices of our First Peoples within our business and community, support more emerging leaders and grow a workforce that is culturally diverse and aware.

Some of our new targets include:

  • Increasing our employment of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people to 2% of our workforce
  • Supporting emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander leaders through the Bank Australia Impact Fund
  • Increasing awareness, education and respect for our nation’s First Peoples through cultural awareness training, staff cultural education at the Bank Australia Conservation Reserve, and celebrating important cultural events like NAIDOC week and National Reconciliation Week
  • Supporting Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander owned businesses through procurement of goods and services

You can read our new RAP and all of our new targets here. We will continue to update customers on our progress through our news and social media pages as well as our corporate report and will release our first RAP scorecard in July 2019 to monitor and track our progress.