The Nationals leader Warren Truss said banks were getting away with not passing on rate cuts to farmers holding agribusiness loans.

“Home owners are painfully aware that when interest rates go up the banks show remarkable dexterity in passing on the rise - in full and immediately, but when rates fall they are notoriously tardy in providing relief - but it’s even worse for Australian farmers,” he said.

“Despite successive official rate cuts of 0.25 per cent in November and December last year, farmers were shafted.”

Mr Truss said Suncorp Agribusiness was the only financial institution to pass on the full 0.5pc cut to its farm loan holders.

“But ANZ Agribusiness, Commonwealth Bank Agri, NAB Agri, Bananacoast Community Credit Union, Bendigo Bank and Westpac Agribusiness only passed on miserly partial cuts,” he said.

“Others, like BankSA Agribusiness, simply abandoned our farmers and hoped no one would notice that they failed to pass on any cut at all.”

Mr Truss said embattled farmers were still struggling to recover from the physical, emotional and financial ravages of a decade worth of the worst drought on record with many problems compounded by floods in all six states in the past year.

“People are drained,” he said.

“Gouging farmers, let alone under these most trying and desperate of circumstances, is unconscionable.

“While the focus is on home loans, interest rates for business and farm loans must equally be exposed.

“Mortgage stress, mounting cost-of-living pressures and languishing business and consumer confidence are biting all families, urban and rural, but it is especially galling for farmers that rate cuts designed to relieve these economic hardships are specifically denied to them.”

YOUR SAY

What do you think of the refusal by most banks to pass on interest rate cuts to farmers?