Bankwatch luminary Bill Carey passes away in South Australia aged 86

Bill Carey was the salt of the Earth

Salt was so valuable it was a means of exchange and payment in ancient Rome – a preservative which kept food unchanged, and which enhanced the flavour and taste of whatever food to which it was added.

Bill’s life and faith reflected a strong understanding of Jesus’ teaching on salt and saltiness:  “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person” (Col 4:6).  In Matthew Jesus tells us we are to be “the salt of the earth”, the “light of the world”.

We are called to be like salt and light – to influence the world as we can in order to improve it, and to understand that our words reflect Christ’s love and the Holy Spirit within us; that our conversation and deeds should aspire to be wholesome, preserving good taste and adding a wonderful flavour to other people’s lives.  Bill, and the love of his life, Trish, echoed this.

Bill’s life reflected all the goodness of the very best salt.  He and Trish were a solid couple who loved their family and their community, and put in an unknown amount of days in supporting that community, especially in it’s hour of need.  Neither asked anything for their sacrifices, and they were sacrifices of both their time and money, but they never complained.   They were always ready with an ear to listen, whether on the end of a phone line (yes kids, before mobiles!), out in a back paddock, under a tree,or an open welcome at their kitchen table. 

Here, those with problems, and there were some huge problems, received some good old country comfort in the form of a cuppa, some special kindness from Trish, and a bit of realistic saltiness with a little humour thrown in with Bill’s assessment of the situation.  People left there knowing someone understood what they were going through, and even more important, with some idea of how they might handle it.  Actually, throughout the whole rural action movement, this sort of action offering constructive advice and a path forward ensured that no-one who came to the action groups for advice committed suicide, at a time when suicide rates were out of control, and many farmers resorted to in desperation.

I like to remember Bill, short in stature with a heart too big to jump over, throwing his head back and laughing heartily.  Or having a bit of a chuckle to himself, or that twinkle in his eye or laugh out loud with co-planners, imagining the outcome of out-manoeuvring the banks or pollies with some strategy.  ….. Or standing his ground like nothing on earth could move him, with that “listen here mate, there’s a line in the sand right here, and you’re not crossing it” look on his freckly face.

Many a time was had having a good belly-laugh relaxing at Bill and Trish’s kitchen table with Jim Cronin, the master yarn-spinner, relating one of his unbelievable stories he always seemed to be able to make believable.  Truly, those pesky Orpingtons hitching a ride on the plane’s wings, or how he’d strapped a couple of wayward rams in seat-belts or something equally ridiculous entertained Bill and Trish and their guests.  Some yarns were even true, elaborately embellished to entertain. Occasionally Jim would pull Trish’s leg unashamedly with one of his yarns, but overall, she had a healthy scepticism for his tales; conversely he always enjoyed Trish’s meals, having a sixth sense about when to arrive to score one.   There was often much raucous laughter, letting off steam built up from enormous pressure they were all under in an effort to save their district and help people all across Australia wanting information or expertise.  

The Driving Force

This is what drove Bill and others – the knowledge that it was bigger than one – it was the gutting of a nation for a globalist agenda and “economic rationalism” ideals which took advantage of “droughts and flooding rains” to decimate the economy and the salt of the earth people who really did the hard work, and took the risks.  Over the active years financial problems were exacerbated when Australia was being decimated by floods or more droughts. Then the economic rationalist policies rationalised that we should shoot our sheep rather than pay our farmers for the sheep, our trucking companies to ship to abattoirs, and our abattoirs to kill and can them for food aid, instead of sending money for bullets to fight a war in Iraq or some faraway place.  This decimated our wonderful wool industry and with other policies which broke and “deployed” our strong industries offshore, our farming and small business families and regional communities were gutted.  Woolgrowers then were levied 25% of their wool clip just to pay interest on the stockpile. 

Bill and Jim knew the banking odds in particular were stacked against farmers and small businesses, and worked ceaselessly in that period to fight it.  They understood the global financiers/UN driven lies and promises of privatisation, deregulation, trade liberalization, and commodification which our politicians, universities and bureaucracies were being brainwashed with, was all destined to end in what was then a new term, called “structural adjustment”.  

The structural adjustment costs were always borne by those at the bottom of the food chain, the hardest workers and people who actually produced something were those that were forced out of business because of economic rationalist policies.   These policies sent our primary and manufacturing sectors broke, and deployed our industries to the “third world”, as per the Lima Declaration.  Australia’s politicians were compliantly willing to send Aussie farmers and industries down the gurgler first.  We liked to be first apparently, and not much has changed since the ‘80’s and ‘90s.  Their “level playing field” only levelled people, businesses, families, rural towns, schools and services to regional areas, which actually produced the real GDP for the nation. 

The criminality of using credit against a nation

The criminality of using credit against a nation to decimate it was something well known to Bill, Jim and others fighting this, and also something which was eventually formally taken head-on with the seminars the Union of Farmers (UF) ran in most States.  Farmers were shown how to cope when banks attacked, how to survive psychologically and actively.  Methods were developed and disseminated amongst groups.

For example, if there was a foreclosure in one State, the banks suddenly found themselves bombarded with faxes from all over Australia at a local, regional, state and national branch level.  Better still, the local branch faxed those up the line, and so on, so the national level received many hundreds or thousands in a single day or within the week.   We were all able to see the humour in this, at least, even though it was very serious. This gave the banks the impression that the UF was much larger than it was, but the strength in all of this was the decentralised format that Bill, Jim and the Chandada Action Group initially formulated.   

It made us hard to fight, and I often wonder how much more effective we’d have been if we had even $10,000 up front to fight – unlike the NFF (No Family Farmers) who collected a huge fighting fund and then disappointed all those who’d chipped in by not addressing interest rates and bank/government policies as all thought they would.  Today, we might call that “controlled opposition”, or a red flag operation, but it had the effect of taking the wind out of the sails of people and leaving them with nothing to fight, spiritually or financially. 

Unconventional, Unquantifiable

So, we fought with what we had, unconventional tactics, unpredictability, common sense, solid ground, good arguments, practicality and targeted action.   Many tactics were shared amongst all the groups, and successes were reported likewise.  The Chandada group instigated a “No-Bid” policy at auctions which all groups adopted (and many other tactics were developed from this). Everyone, especially neighbours, were advised it was a forced sale; the Action Groups supported the family, putting the banks in a position whereby they had to talk turkey – remembering, of course, the basics of how the credit system really works, and the bank’s power to issue credit freely without cost on which farmers had to pay interest, and principal to boot.     Thus, the “Bankwatch” movement in all its forms saved many thousands of farmers across Australia in one way or another, some not even quantifiable. 

Bill explained this in a report for the UF paper in 1993[3]:

This year has been an interesting year, and a natural progression of what we started with our little group at Chandada in 1988.

Farmers are still in trouble, and coming to us for help. The established organisations are still saying they can help, but they aren’t doing anything much, particularly when it comes to helping members.  What they are doing is still throwing darts at us, which is understandable because we’re getting results.  In the Eyre Peninsula alone, we have saved a lot of farmers from eviction through taking action or negotiating for them.

We will never know how many we have saved across Australia — directly or indirectly. Many groups have formed as a result of hearing about our success, and we have been available to help and advise.  However, the demands became too much for us, and the mere fact that Jeanine’s kept on her toes fulltime is testimony to that[4].  The pressure has been eased here, but more people are in trouble and seeking help, so it remains fairly constant.

I had a lady ring me recently who had been given a bit of a push from her bank.  She’d got her back up and gone to another bank seeking help, and got it.  She put up a good case and showed a bit of fighting spirit and when she was leaving, she thanked the bank manager for his help.  He said to her, “Don’t thank me, thank the Action Groups.”  I had never met the lady before, but she rang me up to tell me, and to thank us.

The point of that story is that the good we do is unquantifiable.  No-one will ever know.  If banks know they haven’t been down the line and suspect that people may go to an action group, they’ll probably make the decision to sort it out first.

It’s like the WA RAM setting up the United Farmers Co-operative to import fertilizer.  They have saved their members thousands of dollars, but the true savings to all farmers is unquantifiable, because they have forced the prices down for other farmers. ….

This movement of Action Groups, RAM groups and the Union of Farmers had much to contend with – the fallout from not just the drought, but the “free trade” economic policies spawned from deregulation in 1983, and the fraud and corruption within the “self-regulated” banking system.  Despite the banking inquiries and Royal Commission concerning banks, they have never been brought to proper account for the straight fraud (criminal), or the inhuman things they did to cover it or get what they wanted. 

They would target a family for destruction, freeze accounts, illegally take Family Support (govt) money for a family’s food, embarrass families by making a wife sit waiting in the bank for an hour  desperately in need of groceries, before the manager would tick off her list, deciding whether he’d allow sufficient credit for her to buy vegetables or toilet paper.  Banks make money by “turning over” properties.  They were giving managers “bonuses” for pushing out credit, and the two most prolific banks for this by far were the Commonwealth Banks in Nyngan and Streaky Bay, where managers were part of the Commonwealth’s “Ibis” Awards for career promotions.  The customers didn’t see it coming.  They were confused because their own farm organisations subscribed to the banks “good farmer/bad farmer” lies.  “He’s OK, because he’s a good farmer”.  No – there was no real difference in 99% of cases – it was a lie to demoralise everyone and render the farm organisations ineffective.  That’s where the UF and Bankwatch/RAM were different – we said we’d help anyone, and the banks couldn’t deal with that.

Bill did several long trips with Grant, who remembers Bill curling up to sleep like a Jack Russell on the seat of the bus, whereas there was never anywhere for Grant to put his lanky legs.   Some were long trips like the Qld one in May 1993 to Toowoomba, Meandarra, Charleville and St George for public meetings followed by gatherings to start groups.  I think maybe up to the Mackay area as well – the memory is hazy now!  We also heard in ‘93 that all the banks had 2 day seminar in Qld to workshop how to deal with Grant’s book “Defy and Win”.  It didn’t matter, they didn’t understand it really anyhow.  They were almost completely predictable, but they were frazzled, because their dirty tricks were being exposed, as was the biggest secret of all – the true story about credit, which they particularly didn’t like.

The movement developed many ways of dealing with banks and ways of holding the banks up for several years until farmers had a few good years (without paying interest) behind them.  Then perhaps the son was able to buy the bank out after a series of events (perhaps tenders and/or auctions) which, surprisingly, weren’t good news for the bank.  Eventually, the bank would be “forced” (by circumstances whereby they made the decision) to write off the majority of the debt (for which – [thanks to Keating needing relief for his piggery trough] they got a 150% tax write-off).

Our salt of the earth people fighting this, ironically, understood the mis-use of the credit system as opposed to salt, a valuable commodity as it was of old, used as a means of exchange and payment, being akin to gold and silver in our economy.  They understood that we were shanghaied into a system of central bankers credit to globalise the world and manipulate it for their own greedy purposes.  They understood it should be fought and exposed as best they could.  And so they did.

It is interesting to note that back in 1993, Jim wrote an article in our paper about the French farmers, who were revolting at the time, saying they weren’t confused in their battle to preserve their rural base and culture, and that was our job here.  He said “They perceive the threat to their famiy farm looming through so-called free-trade arrangements (where they are supposed to make way for the masses of imported produce) overwhelming them while the social question is being ignored.”

The Aussie bush-fire has spread

I can’t help but point out the correlation with what’s happening now as farmers across Europe are blockading cities everywhere in a new movement that is spreading globally, because farmers have had enough oppression by red and green tape at the “climate change” altar of the New World Order, or globalist Great Reset as it’s termed now.   The spirit of Bill, Jim and all those in the action groups who fought the system back then and could see it coming, is right there with their overseas cousins now with the culmination of  the bush-fire they started which all began back then, at Chandada — because Bill Carey cared, and talked to his mate Jim.

On a personal level Bill was very often the first port of call for people in trouble back then and those phone calls weren’t short, because people were stressed.  Much of the back-up fell back onto Trish, and she managed the family and backed Bill up again and again.  Likewise, Bill never took Trish for granted.  They were a tight family unit, and since Trish’s passing, Bill was even more devoted to his family (if that were possible!), so our hearts go out to each family member as they will sorely miss Bill’s presence, and his wonderful sense of humour,  hearty laugh, and “salt of the earth” common sense.   Time, distance, and “life” getting in the way meant we didn’t have as much to do with Bill in recent years, not that we didn’t often think of each other, because we could always just pick up where we left off.  Still, it’s a timely reminder that we should do more to reach out and just “be” with friends.

We have fond memories of the time our lives intersected with Bill’s, Trish’s and many others all around Australia — simply because we all felt the same deep-seated passion about “saving Australia” and our “family farmers”, and because Bill started a revolution from the bush when he asked Jim to come over for dinner all those years ago.

Whilst we are remembering Bill not just as a friend, but for his historical importance to Australia, it can’t go without saying that Bill and his beautiful soul-mate Trish were a wonderful team who faced the outside world with a united front.  We remember them fondly for their humongous effort whilst ever retaining a humble character and their Christian spirit of simply helping their neighbours – which was where it all began.

[1] People wanting more information on the history of Bankwatch should get Jim Cronin’s book, Operation Bankwatch.

[2]      Union of Farmers Inc. 

[3]      That’s Country (Union of Farmers paper), Dec 1993.

[4]       ie Union of Farmers had been established

                 VALE BILL CAREY