Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Trade Practices (Horticultural Code of Conduct) Regulations 2006, made under the Trade Practices Act 1974, as contained in Select Legislative Instrument 2006 No. 376, be disallowed.

In moving this motion, obviously we had a lot of conjecture as to whether we should move for disallowance. But the reason for moving for disallowance is that we will plead with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to consider alternatives. The alternatives are so comprehensive that it is hard for me to see how the regulations could be amended rather than having them replaced. We would emphasise that it is most certainly my position and the position of the seconder of this motion, the member for Calare, that if there is a choice between having this or not having this, Minister, then we would prefer to have it. We are only moving for disallowance on the basis that there is an alternative out there, which we will be moving for acceptance by the government. We will have to do that by way of legislation. We make the point very forcefully to the House that some advancement has been made here. We thank the minister for that but, compared with what was required and what was promised, it falls a million miles short.

Having said those things, what was agreed to was a mandatory code of conduct. But this is not a mandatory code of conduct; this is a mandatory contract—it is a contract. And a contract is enforceable by the parties to the contract, not by the government. So the government says, ‘You must have a contract.’ That is good, Minister; we thank you for that. But that leaves us facing off against Woolworths and Coles—not that they have to have the contract anyway! So we do not have a mandatory code; we have a contractual code—two entirely different things. ‘Mandatory’ means that the government tells you to do it. ‘Contractual’ means that the parties decide themselves what they are going to do.

It must be said that I think—and my information is such—that the minister has tried hard for us on this. The current minister is a million times better than his predecessor, and I know that he is a very worthy person. I remember the fate of John Kerin. But I would ask him to recall that John Kerin is remembered with affection because he said publicly what he would like to do. When the government disagreed with him, the reflection was upon the government. At least we knew that we had someone in there batting for us. So we would plead with the minister to take that position. From where I sit, the minister had the embarrassment—although I do not think it was embarrassment; I think he should be very proud of the fact—of having this taken off him for some period of time and Minister Macfarlane was in fact appointed as the spokesman. I think that was very much to the minister’s credit.

But I would ask the minister to think about John Kerin, and I would ask him to consider the famous words of JT Lang. JT said:

It was not important to me that I should sacrifice my political life, but it was vitally important to me that I sacrificed it in a worthy cause—

which, of course, he did, during the Great Depression. So, Minister, we are not asking you to sacrifice yourself, but there may come a time when that is required, because the situation with agriculture in Australia is very sad indeed.

Jeff Kennett is the head of the body that oversights action to try to prevent people committing suicide. On the front page of the Age he said that every four days a farmer in Australia commits suicide. The minister’s brother was one of the best exponents of the fact that if we deregulated the dairy industry it would be the greatest crash in Australian agricultural history. There is the handiwork of the people who involved themselves and dirtied themselves—and they will be answerable to their maker one day—and were a party to the deregulation of the dairy industry. That is their handiwork: every four days a farmer commits suicide. Every two months a sugar farmer commits suicide. When the wool industry was deregulated in western Queensland we had a suicide every two months.

The issue that we are trying to address here is only a very tiny part of the problem. It stems from the fact that the only country on earth with a massive oligopoly situation—such as we have with Woolworths and Coles—is Australia. Read the government report, the so-called Baird report, the fair market report, which indicates clearly that the two biggest food retailers in America, the United States, Germany, France or Japan—or any other country—do not come up to 20 per cent.

In Australia, the big two are Woolworths and Coles. I always like to back up what I say, and the grocery industry overview from Retail World magazine says that 76.7 per cent of the market was held by Woolworths and Coles in 2002. If you go back to 1991, you see that they only held 50.5 per cent of the market. So if ever there was a classic case of duopoly, you have it here. If you want a manifestation of it working, when they deregulated the sugar industry within Australia, the food retailers—principally Woolworths and Coles—took an extra $470 million a year from the Australian sugar producers for their own profits. When dairy was deregulated, we saw a 30 per cent reduction in the amount of money going to the dairy farmers and a 40 per cent increase in price to the consumers over the same five-year period. In the egg industry, the figures were about $400 million. So, in three items alone, there was an extra $2,000 million a year of profit principally divided up between two companies.

I am not attacking Woolworths and Coles. They are there to maximise profits. That is their legal duty, quite frankly. But it most certainly is the duty of the government to protect the consumers and to protect the producers with a free market system—and there sure ain’t any free market system when just two players have 82 per cent of the marketplace.

Our other problem, which I have mentioned on many occasions and which is set out in the latest OECD figures that I have to hand, is that there is a 49 per cent average subsidy tariff in all the other OECD countries and it is six per cent in Australia.

I specifically turn now to the code of conduct itself. I regret that the minister is not here. It is a very important matter, and a matter that he should have cognisance of. I must emphasise again that we asked for a mandatory code. We were promised a mandatory code within 100 days which would include the large supermarket chains. It is now over 700 days, and we have a code that does not include the large supermarket chains, a flagrant breach of promise. The government asked people to vote for them before the election on this basis, and I am sure that there are a number of people who did. They said, ‘Do this for us and we will do this for you.’

When they come out and tell the most flagrant mistruth on a matter of such great importance, is it any wonder that people hate politicians and single out their hatred and contempt for the government and, particularly, the party that was once the champion of rural interests? Here is a party that made this promise and is part of a government that is absolutely determined—

See this speech in context