Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is where it's so important. We are about to finish in parliament in four days. At the end of this week, we will go on our holidays—a holiday from this place, although probably a lot of us will continue to work. But the fact is that people out there are trying to grasp at straws, to hold on and to pay their bills.

I hear a National Party member—Senator Susan McDonald—say, 'Oh, well, we should get the retailers, Woolworths and Coles, to actually collect the money from the consumer, and then pass it back through the processors to the dairy farmers.' In what other industry do we do that in Australia? Do we tell the strawberry farmers and the other fruitgrowers, 'Sorry, you won't get your money until the retailers have sold their product, and then we'll give you back what we think is fair'? Didn't we try that? Didn't Woolworths and Coles put an extra 10c, which went back to dairy farmers, and then another 10c on top of that, which didn't go back to them? Do you really trust these two organisations that have the biggest monopoly in the country? These are the people—Woolworths—who underpaid their workers by $300 million. They didn't pay them the right wages, and you trust them to do this? There is no common sense to what you're saying here—that the farmer should not get at least a production cost. The bill covers a fair farmgate price. Even Barnaby Joyce has come out saying they should receive a fair farmgate price.

Then the other part of the bill is that the ACCC will oversee the regions to ensure that they will stipulate what a fair farmgate price is—not the parliament, not the members of the House, this chamber or any parliament. That is up to an organisation to actually set that up. The third part of the bill is the divestiture so that the processors will not control the market. Most of the processors in the country are foreign owned. Do you really think it's in their best interests? Let me tell you about the foreign ownership; you've allowed all our industries and manufacturing and our essential services to be privatised in the country. We have over 750 multinational companies here that have a turnover of $612 billion a year, and do you know how much tax they pay? $10 billion. The coalition thought it would be wonderful to actually increase that and go after multinationals to pay their taxes here. I have been advocating since 1997 that they pay their taxes in Australia. You did a wonderful job! You've reined it in by 1.63 per cent! We've got an extra $125 million! How wonderful you guys are!

So you are prepared to see this happen in a dairy industry that has a tradition in this country of providing the milk that we need for the domestic market. If you think it's going to actually upset the world trade, it doesn't work that way. This is a domestic market. How it can affect trade agreements is if we actually subsidise the dairy industry. They increase production, which then affects the world market. We are nowhere near that. What we are doing is ensuring that we have a dairy industry for future generations. Otherwise, I will tell you now, we will be buying long-life milk out of New Zealand. Their production is up to 22 billion litres a year.

So the fact is that we need to protect our dairy industry in Australia. It is very important. The people of this nation will be watching this today to see what we are going to do about it. I call on those people. Have a good look at this. If you are opposing this, I say to you: get the bloody guts to stand up as an individual and represent your constituency and the people of this nation, because they feel as if they have been absolutely forgotten. These people are on their knees. I've got one, a dairy farmer up in the Scenic Rim, who has to sign a contract with a processor to get 50c a litre for the milk. That is well and truly below production for a six-year contract. This is what the processors are doing. They're screwing dairy farmers so that they can't make any money out of it. All farmers want is a fair farmgate price.