Another page has been closed on an important part of our national history and that “Revolution from the Bush” which saw in the “Rural Resistance” of Bankwatch, the Union of Farmers, and many, many Rural Action Groups or Rural Action Movement (RAM) groups across Australia – all linked up and moving in one direction to fight bank and government policies dictated from without, which were destroying Australia.
Starting off as Bankwatch, then morphing into the Rural Action Movement one of its founders, Grant Bird of the Riverina town Leeton passed away on April 18. Grant will be remembered as a hero by the many farmers and graziers whose property he helped save from the voracious banks during their purge of family farmers during the early 90’s and 2000’s.
The onslaught by banks against family farmers began when interest rates hit all time highs, combined with collapsed wool prices and prolonged drought in southern Australia was a perfect recipe for foreign-owned banks to kick farmers off their properties many had held for generations.
Police were enlisted as repossession agents for the banks while few eviction notices were ever signed by a judge, always by the court registrar which former One Nation Senator Rod Culleton has since discovered is an illegal process.
Grant’s funeral eulogy recorded in this video is an historical account of the successful Rural Action Movement in Australia that should be preserved in the annals of Australian farming history. Grant’s wife Jeanine, another unsung hero, relates the operations of RAM in the video.
Grant authored a book, Defy and Win which is a step by step procedure on how to defeat the banks and corrupt courts which was widely distributed across regional Australia. (link below)
https://alor.org/Storage/Library/PDF/Bird_G-Defy_and_Win.pdf
How it all started
From 1973-76 Grant was given a newly created position as State Technical Officer for Agricultural
Chemicals – Veterinary Products. He travelled the State extensively, managed 10 specialised
reps, ran field days and training and interacted face-to-face with farmers across the state.
From 1976-86, he was State Product Manager Elders: Agricultural Chemicals – Veterinary,
Fertilizers.
Elders had a presence in other states then, so he was effectively national manager of
that section. He was responsible for sales, budgets and profitability of all agricultural chemicals,
veterinary products, fertilisers, seeds and industrial chemicals (water treatment). He procured
products for 53 branches and created market plans and seasonal promotions as well as training for
the branch network.
In the 80’s and 90’s Australia was in dire straits economically. Due to our being party to the UN
Lima Declaration (1975) we had deployed our industries to the third world to help them up at our
expense. It was a deliberate ploy to destroy our nation, and many family farmers and small
businesses were broken, generational manufacturing businesses decimated or forced offshore to
survive, and interest was around 22% and up to 28%.
Land was unsaleable – who could afford it? By 1990 we had lost over 127,000 farmers in just 2
decades plus half our manufacturing industries. On top of prolonged drought, wool was crashed, we
shot sheep and had the “recession we had to have” in the early ‘90’s – the worst since the Great
Depression. People were desperate. Country towns were dying, people had nowhere to go and
were suiciding and we couldn’t get the government to take any notice.
Grant by then had been working as a partner with Capital Securities serving South Australia and
heavily involved on Kangaroo Island with farmers. He could see what was happening as he had
access to everyone’s financials. He introduced a rural package addressing the removal of long-term
farm debt through Executor Trustee Co of S.A. and set up long & short term finance and property
acquisitions. Executor Trustee was the oldest established rural lender in South Australia, and had
an enviable reputation. However, they were later swallowed up by the State Bank and on-sold to
Austrust in the heady days of the corporate raiders (John Elliott in the case of Elders) and post-
deregulation. When wool crashed, he understood the impact it was having on farmers, and
developed ways to fight.
Prior to that though, his early days with Elder Smith Goldsborough Mort, which he joined after
leaving school, equipped him to eventually work with the Bankwatch / Rural Action movement, and
devise strategies to save farmers. He had an enviable 100% success rate in stopping forced sales
and making banks come to the party to do a deal.
His career in Elders was impressive, and dealing with the big chemical companies as they put their
people into place to gather intelligence in the marketplace, gave him a good grasp of the dirty tricks
they would play, and an acumen for beating them at their own game to get a deal for Elders clients.
RURAL ACTION & THE UNION OF FARMERS
At this time, and in that environment, he met Bill and Jim and they joined forces because he too had
developed strategies to outsmart banks. A Kangaroo Island Action Group was formed after the
wool crash. Grant became sought after as a speaker to different groups, first across SA, and later
nation-wide. Grant knew how to do a deal; how to manouvre banks into positions; and how to let
them know we knew, and they knew we knew what they were up to.
He later wrote: “The attitude across the board in banking at the time was very poor with bank
fraud prevalent in many cases, and at the very least, they had abandoned their fiduciary
obligations to their clients. The best of the farmers found it very hard to deal with a bank that
has said ‘you have no future’, but once they knew how the banks played the game, and with
practical help, their complete doom could be defeated. In most cases the local community supported
these families, and this put the banks under moral pressure to do the right thing. I consider this
episode of my life most rewarding as by far the majority of cases ended up with deals that kept
families together on their farms.”
Grant made a video and wrote a book called Defy and Win, with lines well-spaced so it was easy to
read for stressed out farmers.
I was CEO of the Union of Farmers at about that time, which was set up to lobby for a better deal,
backed up by the Rural Action Movement nationally. I made a video called “For Women Only”
(mostly purchased by men!). We sold these through the Union of Farmers and action groups –usually as a package. They sold all across the nation, and internationally to quite a few countries. I can even remember sending an order to Gibraltar
AN ENVIABLE RECORD OF STOPPING FORCED SALES
The one thing that the Union of Farmers was very proud of was that there were no suicides
amongst those who sought our help or that of the Rural Action Groups – because we were able
to offer a way out of the situation, giving hope in hopeless and desperate conditions. Grant,
just because he used to work out stupid things, and he needed to demonstrate how dire things
were, worked out that the situation at the time was so desperate that if you laid all the suicide victims
head to toe, they’d reach from Adelaide to Melbourne.
We were under a lot of pressure to help people; it took lots of explaining and hand holding, from
morning to midnight. So, we developed seminars to equip farmers and small business people to
understand what was happening to them and how to fight it. We figured at the time it would make it
much easier for us to coach them if they understood how certain actions would get results.
At the first seminar in Claremont Queensland, we started at 8 am and they were still there at 8 pm
so we decided they had to be two day seminars from then on.
The seminars became quite famous. We all learnt a lot and had a lot of fun brainstorming tactics.
For example when banks wanted to put pressure on, it was common for two of them to visit the farm
and they would split up – one with the husband and one with the wife. Their idea was to undermine
the relationship and scare them into leaving to the bank‘s advantage. Grant used to tell them when
this happens and the banker says to the wife how’s your husband coping? She should say oh he’s
really enjoying this. It’s such a challenge and he always loves a challenge.
The banks couldn’t handle that because they needed to be the oppressor. Grant explained that if
there were 30 monkeys up a tree and the tree was being shaken, a few would fall out each time but
the ones that hung on won the day. We used to help people manoeuvre the bank
into doing a deal but of course we let the bank think that they were running the
show.
I used to explain it like drafting sheep – if a big ram jumped out of the drafting
race you just run him around again and put him where you wanted him to go. We let
the banks THINK that they are in control of the drafting gates when in actual fact we
were in control.
