The National Party was behind a policy that gave rise to the agribusiness managed investment schemes (MIS) that later collapsed, leaving some investors destitute. Those same investors are now clamouring for the banking royal commission – called by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after pressure from the Nationals – to consider their cases. It was in 1997 that former deputy prime minister and leader of the Nationals, John Anderson, who was then primary industries minister, announced a national goal of trebling commercial tree crops by 2020. He was responding to the decline of the local forestry industry and “the key tool for accomplishing this goal was MIS,” the National Farmers Federation would later argue as it tried to protect landholders hurt by the schemes.