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GLOSSARYTERMS AS A CREDIT DESK USES THEM

Farm debt mediation

What is farm debt mediation, and when must a lender offer it?

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BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

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Farm debt mediation is a statutory process in New Zealand and in most Australian states, including New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, under which a creditor must offer mediation to a farmer before enforcing a farm debt secured over farm property. Until mediation has taken place or been declined, the creditor generally cannot enforce without a certificate or an exemption. Mediation does not oblige the lender to extend, refinance or write anything off; it obliges both sides to sit down with a mediator and the numbers, and it adds weeks to any enforcement timetable.

BASIS  Practitioner judgment from sixteen years in commercial banking, set out in How Bankers Think (Highbank Press, 2026). Every borrower on this site is a composite constructed for teaching, not a client. The market is mid-market commercial lending as practised in New Zealand and Australia; where a convention differs elsewhere, the page says so.

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