Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The government accepts the amendment. We looked very hard and wanted to see how we would progress with a voluntary code. The voluntary code committee has been meeting for some time. I can say that the representations from a range of industry people really accord with your view and so it did not take much for me to be persuaded by you to adopt a mandatory code.

It is one of those areas where I was probably disappointed that the industry could not come to me with a united way forward. I think you have also heard the criticisms that the industry have reflected about how a voluntary code would operate, and I accept that, if we move to a mandatory code, it will give business certainty and grain growers certainty about how it will operate and the detail that they can operate within it.

I do not share Senator Nash's view about the ACCC. The ACCC are there to manage a range of competition rules—and they will, in this instance, do the work that they do well. Of course, it is always interesting, Senator Siewert, when people want a different type of body than the ACCC. They come up with things like an ombudsman with teeth—which would really fly in the face of what a true ombudsman does—or they come up with another regulatory scheme. Well, in that instance, they really want to go back to a reregulated market. They hark back for quota systems, they hark back for pooling, they hark back for all of those regulatory regimes that actually showed that they did not work. They were very uncompetitive. They led to very negative outcomes and they created bodies that led us into 'oil for food' scandals that we so well know.