Unlike Damien O’Connor or Fed Farmers, this old mutt reckons the newly introduced Farm Debt Mediation Bill will have bugger-all impact on the banks when they decide to sell up struggling farmers.
It is little more than a glorified PR exercise by the government and the bankers’ association.
This was hammered home recently, when your old mate was informed that the ANZ Bank – which only made a paltry $2 billion in NZ last year – has now introduced a 0.75% charge on all its farming clients to have an overdraft facility with the bank.
Fair enough, you may think, but the bank is charging this fee whether or not the OD facility is used. Perhaps this is how the bank funded its former chief executive’s annual $400k-plus expense account.
