Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through no fault of their own, our food manufacturing industry has all but been destroyed by the flood of cheap imports snapped up by the supermarkets—the big duopoly in particular—and the food services sector. They have pushed this product into their no-name brands to improve their bottom line. They can confuse shoppers and con them into a false sense of security about the safety of these imports because our weak, inadequate labelling laws let them baffle shoppers about the real origins of the product. We know that this imported product has scant attention from quarantine services in relation to inspecting their contamination levels.

The relentless regulation of the workforce under the Labor government and the highest carbon and refrigerant gas taxes in the world imposed by Labor banged more nails into the coffin of all of our manufacturers, but the food manufacturing sector in particular has taken a king hit.

As Gary Dawson, CEO of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, recently observed, food is the largest manufacturing sector in the country with a value add five times that of the car manufacturing industry. At least half of the direct employment of over 300,000 people in this sector live and work outside our cities. The food and grocery manufacturing sector receives little government assistance and effectively no tariff protection, despite the extent of dumped food entering our domestic market.

We are currently seeing a feverish race between local and foreign competitors to buy up the Warrnambool Cheese and Butter business. One of the world's largest grain handling companies is trying to buy up GrainCorp so it can control all of the key grain handling assets in eastern Australia. This would suggest it is a viable sector. This would suggest there is competition for ownership of various parts of this food production chain in both the domestic and export sector.

We are also regularly told that there is a glorious future for Australian food manufacturing production and exporting as our neighbours to the north demand high-quality foods as their incomes improve. So we have this amazing dichotomy. On the one hand, there is triumphant trumpeting of our great future prospects in the food manufacturing sector. On the other hand, there is a collapse of food manufacturing. We are down to one fruit manufacturing business—SPCA. That is, of course, in the electorate of Murray. And there is one vegetable manufacturer in Tasmania. They are both struggling, as we speak, to survive. SPCA has been failed by the Productivity Commission in their evaluation of an emergency safeguard measure. They said, 'Look, there is no real problem with the imported product,' while the Anti-Dumping Commission said, 'Yes, there is a significant problem with the importing of cheap product.' In fact, there is a dumping action now in place in respect of Italian tomatoes. The Productivity Commission found no such problem and gave no such support through the World Trade Organization sanctioned duties and tariff measures. So we have to do better in this country or we are going to lose SPCA. That is beyond contemplation.