Statewide
Australia’s corporate regulator failed to investigate claims about the tactics being used by banks to repossess farmers’ properties, a parliamentary inquiry will be told.Tess Ikonomou
In a joint submission, dozens of devastated farmers have laid bare their anguish after their properties, many of which had been in their families for generations, were repossessed through alleged misconduct.
A Senate committee hearing will on Wednesday examine the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s capacity to investigate and take enforcement action.
The farmers reported the “financial and emotional devastation” and in some cases, people taking their own life.
They will tell the inquiry ASIC failed to properly investigate complaints or consider the systemic nature of complaints.
The group says Australian banks have used predatory lending or asset-based lending.
“Some of Australia’s biggest banks … established an ecosystem in the financial sector where farm properties are repossessed using liquidators and big law firms, and farmers are left with no money to purse their cases through the courts having no funds for legal representation,” they said in a submission.
The farmers request the parliamentary inquiry directs ASIC to review their complaints.
ASIC has also come under fire from all sides of politics, after it was accused of obstructing parliamentary investigations.
The regulator made public interest immunity claims in response to some of the questions asked by the Senate committee, arguing the disclosure might harm its investigations, damage the reputations of people involved, and prejudice future prosecutions.
The committee has rejected most of those claims.
A report will be handed down by June next year.
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Comment by Nelle- we were forced to sell our property that had been in the family for over 100 years and it was my conclusion it was the criminal cabal in govt in cahoots with the banks combined who set out in the 1950’s when Australia rode to prosperity on the sheep’s back and Australian farmers were a threat to the cabal that troubles came to the farmers-my father-in-law told me all about when it started (I knew him to be a wealthy man) and since the 1960’s farmers were on the decline -the banks loved a dry time when cash was scarce and a farmer went for a loan-one loan was enough (23% interest in the 1970’s)they had you and they would never let go- when there was only the children and I were left and John Howard had signed off on taking the water from the farmer to sell to the highest bidder (which is never an Australian farmer) I knew the writing was on the wall because we owned an original river licence and a bore which pumped 50 thousand gallons an hour and together that was worth gold-with the sale the bank screwed me over charging me this that and the bloody other and the end result the bank stole over $600.000 – corruption has been running rife since the 1960’s and beginning with Whitlam -all our problems in this country go back to him- signing the Lima agreement, killing off manufacturing , collaborating with a black activist to make Aboriginals the first tribe when they weren’t, air brushing the history of the Pygmies who were here before them and who were all but wiped out by them -indeed labor if you want to kill our country make sure Labor has control often enough-the Liberals are sniffy too but until 2010 we have been tottering on the brink-Tony Abbott stemmed the flow but then the evil duo Turnbull and Bishop got rid of him and the darkness has been closing in ever since-our huge debt started with Labor (36billion) and climbing ever since
Nelle's journey 