87 year old farmer driven off the land by the ANZ bank
by
Damien F. Mackey
Hear this, you who trample the needy
and
do away with the poor of the land,
5 saying,
“When will the New Moon be over
that
we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
that
we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
boosting
the price
and
cheating with dishonest scales,
6 buying the poor with
silver
and
the needy for a pair of sandals,
selling
even the sweepings with the wheat.
Amos 8:4-6
Alan
Jones - An open letter to the people of Australia - audio player - Tuesday
December 9, 2014
Alan
talks to Queensland vet, Dr David Pascoe, and to Treasurer Joe Hockey, about
the plight of an 87 year old farmer driven off the land by the ANZ bank.
THIS
FACE BOOK POST HAS GONE VIRAL AND IS NOW HEADING TOWARDS 1.5 MILLION HITS SINCE
WE POSTED IT ON MONDAY AFTERNOON. THIS IS THE TRUTH OF WHAT IS REALLY
HAPPENING TO OUR FARMERS IN AUSTRALIA
AUSTRALIA
YOU ARE AMAZING!
Politicians
of Australia, the people are speaking - and you need to listen.
The
team of people who are supporting David - who is flat out working and operating
on horses right now - took a call from one of Australia's most respected and
best loved former political leaders this morning who said:
THAT
VETS LETTER HAS BECOME A DEFINING MOMENT IN OUR NATIONS HISTORY.."
read
it yourself....
AN
OPEN LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE:
Dear
Men and Women of Australia [let’s make that Men and Women of the World, Mackey’s
comment],
There
are two photographs on this page, and while they might look like father and
daughter, they are separated by two nations, one ocean and some seventy years.
Yet
incredibly, they are both part of the same tragedy, the kind that leaves deep
and irreparable scars on a nation and its people for a lifetime.
The
young woman who was born in 1907. The elderly man who was born twenty years
later in 1927.
The
photograph of the woman was taken in the Great Depression of 1936 when the man
was still only 9 years old.
Her
name was Florence Owens Thompson and she was a 32 year old mother of seven who
was photographed sitting homeless in a tent. The image was published across the
newspapers of America and it managed to enrage the nation, because people could
not believe that Americans could be treated in such a way.
It
forced President Roosevelt to act, to step up and become a leader for his
times: he launched soup kitchens, work gangs, programs for the homeless, dams
and roads and railways were built – and he gave his people hope.
John
Steinbeck later wrote a book called The Grapes of Wrath which became an
American literary Icon. It was about a drought that made the farmers penniless
– and how the banks had forced them off their land so they could sell it on to
the big powerful corporations. What happened to the farmers of Oklahoma
ultimately carved a deep and shameful scar across the American identity that
was felt throughout the Twentieth Century.
The
second photograph on this page is of Charlie Phillott, now 87, an elderly
farmer from the ruggedly beautiful Carisbrooke Station at Winton. He has owned
his station since 1960, nurtured it and loved it like a part of his own flesh.
He is a grand old gentleman, one of the much loved and honoured fathers of his
community.
Not
so long ago, the ANZ bank came and drove him off his beloved station because
the drought had devalued his land and they told him he was considered an
unviable risk. Yet Charlie Phillott has never once missed a single mortgage
payment.
Today
this dignified Grand Old Man of the West is living like some hunted down
refugee in Winton, shocked and humiliated and penniless. And most of all,
Charlie Phillott is ashamed, because as a member of the Great Generation -
those fine and decent and ethical men and women who built this country – he
believes that what happened to him was somehow his own fault. And the ANZ Bank
certainly wanted to make sure they made him feel like that.
Last
Friday my wife Heather and I flew up with Alan Jones to attend the Farmers Last
Stand drought and debt meeting in Winton. And after what I saw being done to
our own people, I have never been more ashamed to be Australian in my life.
What
is happening out there is little more than corporate terrorism: our own
Australian people are being bullied, threatened and abused by both banks and
mining companies until they are forced off their own land.
So we
must ask: is this simply to move the people off their land and free up it up
for mining by foreign mining companies or make suddenly newly empty farms
available for purchase by Chinese buyers? As outrageous as it might seem, all
the evidence flooding in seems to suggest that this is exactly what is going
on.
What
is the role of Government in all of this? Why have both the State and Federal
Government stood back and allowed such a dreadful travesty to happen to our own
people? Where was Campbell Newman on this issue? Where was Prime Minister
Abbott? The answer is nowhere to be seen.
For
the last few months, the Prime Minister has warned us against the threats of
terrorism to our nation. We have been alerted to ISIS and its clear and present
danger to the Australian people.
Abbott
has despatched Australian military forces into the Middle East in an effort to
destroy this threat to our own safety and security. This mobilization of our
military forces has come at a massive and unbudgeted expense to the average
Australian taxpayer which the Prime Minister estimates to be around half a
billion dollars each year.
We
are told that terrorism is dangerous not only because of the threat to human
life but also because it displaces populations and creates the massive human
cost of refugees.
Yet
not one single newspaper or politician in this land has exposed the fact that
the worst form of terrorism that is happening right now is going on inside the
very heartland of our own nation as banks and foreign mining companies are
deliberately and cruelly forcing our own Australian farmers off the land.
What
we saw in the main hall of the Winton Shire Council on Friday simply defied all
description: a room filled with hundreds of broken and battered refuges from
our own country. It was a scene more tragic and traumatic than a dozen
desperate funerals all laced onto the one stage.
Right
now, all over the inland of both Queensland and NSW, there is nothing but
social and financial carnage on a scale that has never before been witnessed in
this nation.
It
was 41 degrees when we touched down at the Winton airport, and when you fly in
low over this landscape it is simply Apocalyptic: there has not been a drop of
rain in Winton for two years and there is not a sheep, a cow, a kangaroo, an
emu or a bird in sight. Even the trees in the very belly of the creeks are
dying.
There
is little doubt that this is a natural disaster of incredible magnitude – and
yet nobody – neither state nor the federal government - is willing to declare
it as such.
The
suicide rate has now reached such epic proportions right across the inland: not
just the farmer who takes the walk “ up the paddock” and does away with himself
but also their children and their wives. Once again, it has barely been covered
by the media, a dreadful masquerade that has assisted by the reticence and
shame of honourable farming families caught in these tragic situations.
My
wife is one of the toughest women I know. Her family went into North West of
Queensland as pioneers one hundred years ago: this is her blood country and
these are her people . Yet when she stood up to speak to this crowd on Friday
she suddenly broke down: she told me later that when she looked into the eyes
of her own people, what she saw was enough to break her heart
And
yet not one of us knew it was this bad, this much of a national tragedy. The
truth is that these days, the Australian media basically doesn’t give a damn.
They have been muzzled and shut down by governments and foreign mining
companies to the extent that they are no longer willing to write the real story.
So the responsibility is now left to people like us, to social media – and you,
the Australian people.
And
so the banks have been free to play their games and completely terrorise these
people at their leisure. The drought has devalued the land and the banks have
seen their opportunity to strike. It was exactly the excuse that they needed to
clean up and make a fortune, because once the rains come – as they always do –
this land will be worth four to ten times the price.
In
fact, when farmers have asked for the payout figures, the banks have been
either deeply reluctant or not capable of providing the mortgage trail because
they have on-sold the mortgage - just like sub-prime agriculture.
This
problem isn’t simply happening in Winton, but rather right across the entire
inland across Queensland and NSW. The banks have been bringing in the police to
evict Australian famers and their families from their farms, many of them
multigenerational. One farmer matter of factly told us it took “oh, about 7
police” to evict him from his first farm and “maybe about twelve” to evict him
from his second farm which had been in his family for many generations. You
think they are kidding you. Then you see the expression in their eyes.
And
there was something far worse in the room on Friday: the fear of speaking out
against the banks: when we asked people to tell us who had done this to them,
they would immediately start to shake and cry and look away: They have been
silenced to protect the good corporate image of their tormentors called the
banks. What in God’s name have the bastard banks been allowed to do to our
people?
This
is a travesty against the rights and the human dignity of every Australian
So
it’s only fair that we start to name a few of major banks involved: The ANZ is
a major culprit (they made $7 billion profit last year). Then there is Rabo -
which is an international agricultural bank - the NAB, Bank West and Westpac
(who paid CEO Gail Kelly a yearly salary of some $12 million). They are all
equally guilty. For any that we have missed, rest assured they will be publicly
exposed as well
But
here’s the thing: when these people are forced off their farms, they have
nowhere to go. There are no refugee services waiting, such is the case for
those who attempt to enter the sovereign borders of this nation. The farmers
simply drive to the nearest town – that’s if the banks haven’t stripped their
cars off them as well - and they try and find somewhere to sleep. Some are
sleeping on the backs of trucks in swags. There is basically no home or
accommodation made available to take them. They camp out, shocked and broken
and penniless – and they are living on weet bix and noodles. If there is
someone that can lend a family enough money to buy food, they will: otherwise
they are left completely alone.
And
consider this: not one of them has asked for help. Not one. They just do the
best they can, ashamed and broken and brainwashed by the banks to believe that
everything that has happened is completely their own fault
There
is not one single word of this from a politicians lips, with the exception of
the incredibly courageous father and son team of Bob and Robbie Katter, who
organised the Farmers Last Stand meeting. The Katter family have been in the
North since the 1890’s, and nobody who sat in that hall last Friday could
question their love and commitment to their own people.
There
is barely a mention of any of this as well in the newspapers, with the
exception of as brief splash of publicity that followed our visit.
The
Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce attended the meeting in a bitter
blue-funk kind of mood that saw him mostly hunched over and staring at the
floor. He had given $100 million of financial assistance in a lousy deal where
the Government will borrow at 2.75% and loan it back at 3.21%.
The
last thing these people need is another loan: they need a Redevelopment Bank to
refinance their own loans: issuing a loan to pay off a loan is nothing more
than financial suicide.
The
reality is that Joyce cannot get support from what he calls “the shits in
Cabinet” to create a desperately needed Redevelopment Bank so that these
farmers can get cheap loans to tide them through to the end of the drought.
Our
sources suggest that those “shits in Cabinet” include Malcolm Turnbull –
Minister for Communications and the uber-cool trendy city-centric Liberal in
the black leather jacket:, Andrew Robb – Minster for Trade and Investment and
the man behind the free trade deal, the man who suddenly acquired three trendy
Sydney restaurants almost overnight, the man who seems to suddenly desperate to
sell off our farms to China – and one Greg Hunt, Environment Minister and the
man who is instantly approving almost every single mining project that is put
in front of him.
At
the conclusion of the meeting, we stood and met some of the people in the
crowd. My wife talked to women who would hug her for dear life, and when they
walked away people would suddenly murmur “oh, she was forced off last week” or
“they are being forced off tomorrow” . Not one of them mentioned it to us. They
had too much pride.
The
Australian people need to be both informed and desperately outraged about what
is being done to our own people. This is about every right that was once held
dear to us: human rights, property rights, civil rights. And most all, our
right to freedom of speech. All of that has been taken away from these people –
and the rest of us need to understand that we are probably next.
In
the last four weeks the Newman Government has removed all farmers rights to
protest to a mine and given mining companies the rights to take all the water
they want from the Great Artesian Basin – and at no cost to them at all.
And
all of this has happened under the watch of both Premier Newman and Prime
Minister Abbott.
Until
Friday, we used to think of Winton as the home of Waltzing Matilda: it was
written at a local station and first performed in the North Gregory Hotel. I
think it was Don McLean who wrote, “something touched me deep inside…the day
the music died”… in his song American Pie, and for us, last Friday was the day
music died.
We
will never be able to sing Waltzing Matilda again until we see some justice for
these people, and all the farmers of the inland.
This
is no longer the Australia we once knew: no longer our country, no longer our
people, no longer the decent caring leaders we once remembered.
Right
now, the banks, the mining mates, the corrupt politicians and all the ‘mongrels
in suits’ have won – and the Australian people don’t have a clue what has been
done to them.
Like
the American Depression and the iconic photograph of Florence Owens Thompson,
there is a terrible, gaping wound that has been carved across the heartland of
this nation.
We
need to fully grasp that, and to understand that our people – dignified, decent
and honourable old men like Charlie Phillott - have been deliberately
terrorized, brutalised – and sold out.
In
one sense, Charlie Phillott has become the symbol overnight of every decent
Australian: the simple right to live out our lives on the land we love - and
the land we are still free to call our own. At least until some dangerously
persuaded corrupted trendy liberal theorist decided to strip all that away.
The
truth is, no Australian was ever consulted about whether or not they wanted to
see their land mined into oblivion or see our precious water poisoned and given
away for free, whether they wanted to be driven off their land by the greed of
banking executives who saw the chance to make a profit by wiping out the
weakest and most vulnerable amongst us.
No
Australian was ever consulted about whether or not we wanted to see our beloved
homeland sold on the cheap to greedy faceless foreigners just because some
slimy two-faced minister managed to convince a weakened prime minster to meekly
carry out his bidding.
Nobody
has asked us. We the People. Not once.
So if
we are ever going to do something, then we’d better realise that its now only
two minutes to midnight – so we’d better move fast.
Regards
David
[Pascoe]
I [Damien F. Mackey] conclude this tragic tale with a quote
from Micah 2:2-4, voicing the very same sentiments as the prophet Amos (Micah has
in fact been called “Amos redivivus”):
2 Woe to those who
plan iniquity,
to
those who plot evil on their beds!
At morning’s light they carry it out
because
it is in their power to do it.
2 They covet fields and
seize them,
and houses, and take them.
They defraud people of their homes,
they
rob them of their inheritance.
3 Therefore,
the Lord says:
“I am planning disaster against this people,
from
which you cannot save yourselves.
You will no longer walk proudly,
for
it will be a time of calamity.
4 In that day people
will ridicule you;
they
will taunt you with this mournful song:
‘We are utterly ruined;
my
people’s possession is divided up.
He takes it from me!
He
assigns our fields to traitors.’”
