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

Before the last federal election, the then Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, promised that the government would within 100 days introduce a mandatory code of conduct to regulate the sale of fruit and vegetables throughout Australia. He specified: ‘The code will include the large supermarket chains.’ We appreciated very much this remark, and in fact I went on record as praising the then Deputy Prime Minister. This was a very specific commitment. It bound his party. If they secured the balance of power, they were obliged to implement this promise or be seen to all the world to be liars, and liars on a grand scale, since this market is almost as big as the coal industry to the Australian economy. After 700 days, a code was introduced, but it specifically excluded the large retail chains. The whole code is about the large retail chains. It is an absolute farce to bring in a code of conduct that does not include the sale to the large retail chains.

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