A Wunch of Bankers by Daniel Ziffer

Author:Daniel Ziffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS069000, BUS070140, BUS004000, BUS023000, LAW007000
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2019-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

7

BILL

About four seats in the back row have small A4-sized laminated signs saying ‘MEDIA’ on them, to reserve them for the small number of journalists covering the entire hearings. A media room downstairs draws most of the journos, as well as the photographers and camera operators watching the feed before dashing outside to capture exiting witnesses.

I always keep a media seat spare, in case a colleague comes up from below or arrives late, but it’s a bit crazy to hold three if I’m pretty sure everyone’s downstairs.

A man in his sixties enters the court, eyes the completely packed room, and stares down the back row.

Bill Mott is neatly dressed in pressed khaki pants, a check shirt, a green jacket, and a blue tie. He doesn’t look uncomfortable, but I can tell it isn’t his regular get-up. I grew up in country Victoria, and he looks like so many friends of my parents when they dressed up for a special event.

I know he isn’t a journalist, but I nod him my way, and he sits down next to me.

‘I’m here to confront the NAB bankers who took my farm,’ he tells me, without hesitation, as I try to focus on the completely unrelated witness speaking in the box.

Oh, mate, I think — and, shortly, will tell him — that is absolutely, 100 per cent, not going to happen.

Bill’s story has parallels to those of so many people I speak to during the year of the royal commission: at their homes, at hearings, in coffee shops, on the phone, on email.

Things are going fine. There are a few problems — perhaps an error or a change in circumstances. A dispute about how to fix it. A combative attitude by the bank, or the person. A rift, a reluctance to accept the bank’s decision. The customer isn’t willing to budge, or fails to accept an unfair decision. Unbeknownst to the customer, several steps earlier the bank has escalated the dispute well above the friendly local representative they have had a relationship with. While they’re still dealing with their long-standing, and generally sympathetic and helpful, contact, the bank has begun an almost unstoppable process. So — seemingly suddenly for the victim — a long-time-in-train set of problems comes to a head. For the bank, it involves months of planning. For the victim, it feels like they lose their asset — usually a home or farm — overnight. A foreclosure and receivership process begins that eats up so much time and money, and causes so much angst, that the original dispute starts to look like a restaurant bill you can’t work out how to split fairly. The bank liquidates the asset, takes its money, and dusts off its hands — having satisfied all the legal obligations of its original agreement with the customer — and moves on. The person doesn’t.

Four years ago, Bill was a happily married father of five children, with a gallantly built $22 million estate in the Western Downs region of Queensland.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.