By: Barry Soper | Thursday, November 01, 2012 6:00 AM

With the hyperactive, sugar high effects wearing off trick or treaters for another year it's time to turn attention to one of our highly profitable industries that's thrived over the years on both tricks and treats.

The trick in the banking industry is to suck up as much money as possible at low interest rates and spew it out at higher rates - and there's always a ready market in God's Own given our love affair with bricks and mortar.

The treat is the eye-watering numbers that make Russel Norman turn, well, green - and not with envy but with a sense of injustice. The crusading Kermit's having a go at banks in his fatherland who've been returning record profits which he says are made on the backs of business and households here.

The bank that was once heralded as the People's Bank, the Bank of New Zealand, is now owned by the Aussies as are the other three big trading banks here.

The BNZ's returned a profit over the past year of $741 million, up by 20 percent on a year earlier. That pales into insignificance when you compare the numbers to the biggest Aussie bank operating here - the ANZ, which has sent the National Bank's rearing black horse to the knackers yard. It's had a 10 percent profit hike to $1.3 billion, the ASB's bottom line has also climbed by 11 percent to a profit of $658 million, and Westpac's yet to publish its misty eyed figure - but in the nine months to June it was sitting on a pretty profit of $465 million.

And out of all that money comes the four bosses' salaries which combined add up to more than $15 million a year with the lowest at a pittance of just over $2 million, to the Westpac waterer on around $5 million.

They make our own Kiwibank look like a demented reef fish gasping for air by comparison with a profit of $79 million which is nothing to turn your nose up at though considering it's increased by 75 percent on a year earlier.

And the one consolation is that this green bank with Saint Jim Anderton as its first customer is growing at more than eight percent a year.

But Ned Kelly is alive and well on this side of the Tasman and it seems it'll take more than years to weary him!

Photo: Edward Swift