By Jeanine Bird
Bill Carey was solid as a rock, and resolute when there was a need for action. He started a revolution in Australia – a grass-roots revolution that began in the bush, and reverberated right across Australia. It echoed through regional areas throughout the nation, and ended in the cities shaking the movers and shakers themselves. It’s a well-known story in the Chandada [SA] region, starting in 1988 with the district celebrating an 18th birthday at the Chandada Hall. However, there was a heavy overtone amongst farmers there, as there was in most of Australia.
People spoke to Bill as a trusted friend at the party, and confided in him the financial trouble they were in after six years of drought on the Eyre Peninsula. They would normally have taken this in their stride, save for interest rates blowing out from 12% to 22% and some 28% seemingly overnight. This year, there were no prospects of planting a crop in a drought. Banks had been greedy since the Hawke/Keating government’s deregulation in 1983. They pushed out credit in an effort to “mark their territory”, escalate profits for themselves, and incentivise managers to lend come hell or high water, and to hell with what they were doing to people. Consequently, as land prices crashed, people found themselves with little or no equity, and debts worth more than the farm.
While Bill himself was in a position to ride out the drought, he could see the district being gutted and the devastating effect it would have on the community. Both he and Trish felt sick to the core. Knowing he had to try to do something about it, at supper Bill approached his good mate and neighbour Jim Cronin, from Deep Well Station, which was a farming operation Jim and his brother Pat operated. Jim was an opal miner too, and was home from Cooper Pedy. Jim, while a bit of a philosopher was also very practical, a clear thinker, well travelled and a man of action, so Bill invited him over for dinner the next night to discuss the havoc banks were threatening. And so began an amazing era in Australian history ……………… right from Chandada which was to spread nation-wide.
It’s worth quoting from Jim’s book, Operation Bankwatch[1]:
After tea the next night when the Carey children had gone to bed, Bill was most direct and very specific about the actual financial situations which some of his neighbours had discussed with him. Bill expanded on the desperate plight facing Eyre Peninsula farmers. He spoke of the banks’ inflexibility; stating that dozens of families could be forced from their properties – some properties farmed by the same family for three generations or more. He started to count on his fingers those in real trouble who had spoken to him about their circumstances and said “the Minister for Agriculture, Kym Mayes, says there is no hope for these people. The Premier, John Bannon was here twelve months ago, wringing his hands, and blaming the banks, but nothing has been done since. The Federal Government won’t give us disaster relief because the State Government won’t declare the drought a natural disaster! They are not prepared to spend any money in assistance to instigate Federal Relief funding!”
Bill continued in a fiery tone, “The banks are going to pick these fellows off, one by one! No-one seems to care how many of them go! So we’ll have to help ourselves.” This sketchy outline was enough to make Jim ask himself, ‘What is Bill trying to do? He wants us to take on the world!’ But, there was no question – something had to be done to try to save these farmers!
They DID take on the world!
Thus, they took on the world. Bill and Jim enlisted three more neighbours, Anthony Tomney, Aden Lynch and Jim’s brother Pat and the rest is history – the original Chandada Action Group (CAG) was formed. Their objectives were to keep family farmers in their district: to stop forced sales and ensure all farmers stayed on their land unless they wanted to go. This was an ACTION group, and as eventuated with action groups across Australia, the strength (particularly originally) was in not being a formal group, but in unpredictability, determination and action, even if unconventional. Bill became chairman of the group and Jim spokesman. From little acorns big trees grow. This tree took firm roots and spread it’s canopy nation-wide on the bush telegraph!
Such was the beginning of a very long haul in the Australian farmers fight to survive, spawning “Bankwatch” and Rural Action Groups all over Australia, the Union of Farmers(UF)[2], and particularly in WA, the Rural Action Movement (RAM) formed with many RAM groups. The impetus for all this came from Bill and Trish’s kitchen table, expanding to Jim and Pat’s and outwards across Australia.
So, Chandada was the beginning of tactics, planning, media attention, huge meetings like the initial district meeting the CAG called at the Chandada Hall (1/11/88), the Wudinna Rally (12/2/89), bank meetings and confrontations, political games and learning how to out-manoeuvre government and banking policies in order to get things done.
Bill and Trish’s family were young and the pressure was enormous. Their phone and Jim’s never stopped ringing, and yet they still had their family and farms to run. Jim became full-time on it for 5-6 months. In essence it became a full-time unpaid job for them all, one they had to fit in on top of everything else. They heard everyone else’s problems, and were rural counsellors before the time of rural counsellors; friends to crumbling and desperate families, lending an ear and dispensing hope; being thrust into roles fronting a movement that was building a network; such was the momentum.
Trish was Bill’s rock and vice versa, and Bill and Jim were the rocks that the Eyre Peninsula was depending on to lead them out of trouble. That was the tall and short of it – or rather, they were! The district came together because there was hope in action. Many had no option, but it was the Chandada Action Group that led the way, the bulk of the pressure falling on the original Action Group, but more particularly, Jim, Bill and Trish (and those backing them up in various ways) before it expanded forth.
News of the district crisis meeting the group called at Chandada (1/11/88) spread on the Bush Telegraph with people from all over wanting to come. The media, which was discouraged, arrived from Adelaide and elsewhere anyway. The district was welcomed, as was support, constructive criticism, and promises of assistance. The Action Group had set their parameters and outlined them to the meeting, which were heartily ratified by all. One objective existed, and all other activity must serve that single objective: Every primary producer must be assisted to remain on their property, unless they voluntarily decide to leave. Consequently, no forced sales would be permitted, and support would be sought from throughout SA to save other farms being threatened with foreclosure. This was the first real shot across the bank/government bows that farmers weren’t going to take it any more.
They Meant Business
They meant business, and organised the Wudinna Rally (12/2/89) where they launched “Bankwatch”. They petitioned the Governor, and always a step ahead, created a series of “unpredictable” actions which unsettled the banks and government. On 8/1/88 Jim “leaked” a story to the media that the Action Group was preparing to take direct action, and the first bank to foreclose on a farmer, or force them off his property, would find that farmer, their family, chooks and pets camped on the front lawn of their Adelaide home within 24 hours – because farmers have nowhere else to go! “We are remaining on our properties, where we belong, or we are camping on the banks property, where we do not belong. We mean business.”
Likewise, Bill famously told the huge crowd at the Wudinna Rally he’s be prepared to live in a caravan and door-knock the entire Eyre Peninsula to get support to force banks to negotiate, and called for volunteers for door-knocking, and some other unspecified action. They called on those who were in a position to do so, to boycott the banks by closing accounts from the major banks within the week to show the banks and governments the crisis needed negotiating. Many did, and shortly after the CAG executed a lightning single day bank picket with military precision. Nearly 200 volunteers stood outside major banks across the Peninsula (when there were more branches!) handing out leaflets highlighting hidden bank charges and asking people not to go into the bank that day if they could help it, and if they could, to move their accounts to a Building Society or Credit union.
So many accounts were moved by people from all walks of life, from school children to pensioners and in between, that extra staff had to be put on by the credit unions receiving the influx of deposits. The banks were stunned, and knew they had a battle on their hands. The banks may have had the money, but they’d already lost the moral and media battles and had no credibility.
Fighting a Pincer Action of Bank & Government Policies
Nevertheless, the farmers were fighting a pincer-action of bank and government policies squeezing them from all sides.
The media reported after Wudinna “The rally … was the ultimate pledge of unity in the battle with the banks and the State Government for support” (West Coast Sentinel, 15/2/89). The Port Lincoln Times front page (14/2/89) said “ the common needs of these people were welding them into a community where personal benefit was being put aside so that neighbours could be helped, a collective atmosphere reminiscent of the sacrificial days of World War II. The mood was sombre. Despair was giving way to determination, actions were outlined in which every person could participate…”
This was just the beginning to what was to become a huge movement of grass-roots action, resulting in many groups across all States but Tasmania, and the inception of the Union of Farmers [UF] which became a conduit for these groups and disseminated the best of the ideas and actions amongst the groups.
The momentum thrust them into an organised frenzy on many fronts. Bill and Jim’s phones started early in the morning and didn’t stop ringing ‘till late at night. People wanted to help. People needed help, or someone to talk to. Media wanted to know what was going on. Strategies had to be discussed. Government was unconcerned despite the area producing 10% of the nation’s wheat crop in good years. The Action Group sought a moratorium on farm debt, or long-term low interest loans, and talked to banks, MP’s, even the Governor, who later came to visit. This sort of pressure was borne by them for a long time, and ultimately they helped other groups to start. They travelled, mostly by car or bus, to speak to other groups wanting to do something all over Australia. Banks were ruthless, and they needed taking to task.
Banks threatened farmers who they were pressuring with foreclosure to not approach the Action Groups or they’d really run them through and leave them destitute so they’d leave with nothing. But the solidarity and resolve that was born out of the Chandada group spread far and wide. Bill and Jim in particular, were in great demand to travel to other areas, which they did, to inspire and help new groups to grow.
Those farmers who sought advice from the Action Groups/UF were the ones who ended up staying, unless it was really their choice to leave – and then they were very often able to leave with something to show for their lives work. Sometimes people made the decision because they were just exhausted, and everyone understood that, but the very best efforts to ensure they left with some dignity and money were made by the groups. Generally those who kept quiet because they were scared of what the banks might do, ended up leaving after a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears, often with just a pittance (eventually offered by governments) to do so, which barely made a deposit on a house. P/2
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