Banking royal commission: nightmare goes on for ANZ victims

As far as Dimity Hirst can tell, nothing has changed at ANZ, the bank she blames for seven years of ‘mental and physical anguish’.

Dimity Hirst with daughters Bethany and Ruby and their horses Jenni and Will. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

As far as Dimity Hirst can tell, nothing has changed at ANZ, the bank she blames for seven years of “mental and physical anguish”, in the months since she and her ­husband, Michael, extracted a grud­ging apology from it at the ­financial services royal commission. “I don’t believe it has, ­because it’s a cultural thing,” Ms Hirst told The Weekend ­Australian.

Nor has the bank been in touch since Michael Hirst gave evidence at the royal commission in late June.

“It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest,” she said. “Not a word.”

The Tasmanian couple was left with nothing — except debts — when ANZ sold their five farms at below valuation in 2012, two years after the bank took over rural ­lender Landmark.

ANZ’s treatment of borrowers who were part of the troubled Landmark loan book was the focus of the commission’s inquiries into the way banks treat rural customers, taking up three days of a five-day hearing in Brisbane.

In Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s interim report, released yesterday, ANZ’s conduct in relation to the Hirst family was found to have fallen short of community standards and expectations.

The bank initially assured the Hirsts it would be business as usual — in 2011, it even took them to lunch at one of Launceston’s priciest restaurants, where executives urged them to borrow more money and expand their farm business. In early August that year, it offered to lend the couple more money after valuing their five farms at $7.75 million.

But documents tendered to the commission show that within a fortnight, the bank cut its valuation by 40 per cent, beginning a financial, mental and physical nightmare for the family.

“Within 21 days, we went from everything being fine to being told they wanted their money back,” Ms Hirst said.

She said the family had between 1200 and 1600ha of land — a main farm with 400 head of ­cattle and other properties they dressed up for sale by leasing some of the land to forestry companies and turning the rest into pasture.

The bank sold the lot to satisfy about $4m in debt just as the forestry company to which the family had leased much of the land, Tasmanian institution Gunns, collapsed.

Ms Hirst said if ANZ had come clean earlier, the family would have been able to satisfy the bank by selling some of the properties.

Once Gunns collapsed, it stopped paying rent and the status of the land was in legal limbo because of uncertainty over who owned the trees grown on it.

Eventually, after more fights with ANZ, the bank paid $684,000 in compensation.

Ms Hirst said they were still paying off farm debts run up with suppliers, despite only working part-time, and could no longer get credit.