We know what happened to the once high-flying "entrepreneurs" of the 1980s. After their orgy of big borrowing and asset shuffling, many are bankrupt yet still live in luxury. Christopher Skase hides away in Spain, Alan Bond is free after a brief time in prison, the Tricontinental Royal Commission found that no-one was to blame, and the chief owner of the failed Pyramid group is still in business selling franchises. They have got off lightly. But we seldom hear the personal stories of the millions of victims they left in their wake. ROXLEY HALLEDAY is one of the victims of the Pyramid collapse. There are many others in worse situations, she says, but she wrote this letter to the candidates standing for the Victorian election in her electorate of Melbourne to provoke some action on behalf of the victims of the failed "entrepreneurs". Dave Holmes, the Democratic Socialist candidate, arranged to publish her story in Green Left Weekly.
I'm not enthusiastic at the prospect of voting either Labor or Liberal because the problems facing Victoria seem beyond the ability of either to correct. And there is also the big problem of "trust".
My gravest concern on a personal level is the plight I and my family are in as a result of being non-withdrawable shareholders with the failed Pyramid group. Some 10,000 people with this type of savings were not compensated at all by the government even though it has been established by the liquidators that this form of deposit was misrepresented to the majority of people as a form of 30-day notice account.
It seems politicians have the wrong impression of us. We are not "silvertails" — just pretty ordinary people and some charitable bodies like the Brotherhood of St Laurence. Most are old age pensioners who have lost their retirement funds. Many are sick and many others have already died. Thirteen people have committed suicide, which is a sad indictment against all involved who were responsible for causing hard-working people to lose their savings.
I now find myself in a downward spiral with a bleak-looking future after having lost the fruits of years of effort. Moneywise and career-wise I have become a victim of circumstances beyond my control. My husband, myself, a 21-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old son all survive solely from unemployment benefits. My children had their education curtailed by the loss of our savings and we have all suffered psychologically from a sense of having been dispossessed.
Prior to the Pyramid disaster, an accident to my right hand cut me off from pursuing my career as a freelance fashion artist/designer. I thought a good education background — including a BA degree with an honours English component, a library diploma and some study towards a Dip Ed — would stead. Not so. Besides the recession, age discrimination appears to be one of the worst problems, unless you're established in your own business or are a politician.
I hope to re-establish myself as an artist and my husband and children wish to pursue artistic careers too but we are hampered by having no space to work in.
Our money was with Countrywide [a building society in the Pyramid group] as we had been promised a housing loan once we had saved enough to put a deposit on a reasonable-sized home. The banks had rejected us as unstable low-income earners. Unfortunately, the building society misled us into believing that non-withdrawable shares which could be withdrawn on one month's notice, best served our purpose.
If we could have our $8192 of non-withdrawable shares restored, it could help us get back to basics. At present, my car is in need of repairs I can't afford. The cramped four-room cottage we live in requires extensive replastering and painting due to rising damp. Our stove no longer works and has to be replaced.
This seems like a paltry sum in comparison to the huge pay-offs politicians and senior public servants get for failing in their jobs. It is an amount that we feel would be hardly missed by the government, yet would make the world of difference to us — a common feeling amongst our fellow sufferers.
I wouldn't mind so much if my money were diverted to save lives in Somalia or Bosnia, but as I nearly killed myself meeting deadlines to earn it and later survived two stress-related cancer scares, the thought of it disappearing down some black hole caused by greedy financiers and untrustworthy, power-hungry political egoists, is something I can never forgive.