Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to 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.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I hesitate to interrupt my friend the member for Kennedy but I do not think it is appropriate for him to refer to members of the government as liars. I ask him to withdraw that statement and not repeat it.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He never did.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! I have been listening and I believe the member for Kennedy is in order.

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

After 700 days a code was introduced that specifically excluded the large retail chains. The major element requested that every sale have a bill of sale. That is surely not an unreasonable requirement, Mr Speaker. But that a sales docket should be produced to cover a sale, where it is a sale to a food retailer, is specifically excluded by the government’s code. Why would you specifically exclude a sales docket?

The promise was given to people in the electorate of Kennedy—and let me name them: Joe Moro, Scott Dixon and John Gambino at Mareeba; Noel Hall and Colin Pace at Rollingstone; and Tableland Fruit and Vegetable Growers, and Rural Action and their secretary, Bernie O’Shea. Similar undertakings were given to grower representatives from the New South Wales Farmers Association horticultural committee, in the electorate of the member for Calare. We thank the member for Calare for jointly presenting this bill in the House today. He has my gratitude and the gratitude of my growers for his support on this issue. Along the Murray and in the Riverina the announcement was also received with very great gratitude to the government for making this promise.

If you make a promise and give a commitment and then flagrantly break that promise, you put in the consciousness of people hatred and mistrust which will last for the rest of the time that they vote. That is what has happened here: dreadful damage has been done to the credibility of the government.

The reason for the necessity of a mandatory code of conduct is the phenomenon called the ‘harvest fall’. That means that when harvesting begins, of mangoes, for example, as more and more farmers start to harvest—they do not all come on stream at the same time—the price starts to fall as the huge volume of product comes onto the market. What happens then is that many of the stores of the large retail chains will return product. They buy it one week at $20 a carton. The price slides the next week to $10 a carton and they suddenly decide that the product has blemishes upon it so they return it to the grower. They no longer have to pay $20 a box; they now have to pay only $10 a box. Their superiors at Woolworths or Coles, or whatever the retail chain is, say that these store managers are very good little boys and promote them, but they get promoted over the dead bodies of the farmers. Unfortunately, and sadly, that can be literally true. These days in Victoria, along the Murray, every four days a farmer commits suicide. So, to help overcome this, we simply ask for a sales docket. (Time expired).

Bill read a first time.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with standing order 41(d), the second reading will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.