Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight, I rise to speak perhaps briefly on an issue that is emerging within the Queensland sugar industry. I remind the fact to colleagues in the chamber that most of the sugar industry in this country is located in my home state of Queensland. It is a significant industry. It has some 4,500 grower families. Most of the farmers in sugar are family operations—mum, dad and children—and many of them are multigenerational in this particular sector. Significantly, dozens of small vibrant communities in North Queensland rely almost exclusively on the sugar industry to underpin their local economies. If you have met these people, Mr President, you would know that these are very decent, basic, hardworking Australians who have devoted their lives to the production of this valuable commodity.

Sugar played a very significant part in the development of my home state and particularly in the development of North Queensland—most particularly on the eastern seaboard between the Great Dividing Range and the coast. We have had struggles in this space now for two or three years after the arrival and eventual execution of a business plan by a multinational company called Wilmar Sugar. As I speak, one should keep in mind the impact to an agricultural industry or indeed any other industry, where a company gets excessive control in the space—that is to say, what the company does or does not do impacts directly on not only these growers that I have mentioned but these coastal economies and communities of interest, and indeed, with an industry of this size, on our national interests.

When Wilmar came along, as most suitors do when they first sidle up beside you, they were the perfect corporate citizen who indicated during the foreign investment review process that they had no real intentions of creating disruption within the industry. Indeed this is a very stable industry. This industry has operated on the same terms now for 116 years and it involves a wonderful principle—one that I think should be introduced into other agricultural industries—where growers or producer have the ability to retain some economic interest in the product that they produce as it goes down through the supply chain, through the marketing line and reaches its destination with the customers.

In the sugar industry, we have seen Wilmar try and corner the market, reducing our farmer-to-farmgate prices by ignoring and, in fact, rejecting the principle of grower economic interest that has been in place for all these years that came about as a result of a royal commission that occurred here in Australia all those years ago. They have been unsuccessful with that with the Queensland government—and, might I say, it was not the Queensland Labor government. It was despite the Queensland Labor government. I acknowledge the support that our LNP had from the Katter Australian Party in Queensland to be able to introduce legislation into the Queensland parliament—in fact, it was the first time the Labor government in Queensland were beaten on the floor—when they introduced legislation to preserve the grower economic interests and to preserve arrangements where there was a choice in marketing.

That a grower should be able to reduce who markets their sugar is a fairly novel idea to Wilmar Sugar. So that was very successful. The growers are happy and, in many instances, that legislation is working well—except for Wilmar, who remain completely obstructionist to the intent of the changes in the legislation and are refusing to engage with industry there to be able to move forward under the new laws and legislation.

But dangerously, I say—and I am very conscious of using the word 'dangerously'—Wilmar have found another way that they think they can skin the cat. We have sugar terminal assets in my home state of Queensland. There are six bulk sugar terminals, located in Cairns, Mourilyan, Lucinda, Townsville, Mackay, and Bundaberg. These are very important assets to the local economies of those communities. The forefathers who set arrangements in place from the Queensland government handed those ports and assets over to STL, which is a Queensland company—Sugar Terminals Limited—and, importantly, they allowed two-thirds of the control of those terminals to be in the hands of growers and one-third to be in the hands of millers, recognising the importance of growers and that they must always have access to these terminals in a right, fair and equitable manner.

So the terminals are leased to Queensland Sugar Limited under a leasing arrangement, and the board there has five positions. It currently has one fiercely independent and well-respected chairman of the board—who, interestingly, did not even come out of the sugar industry. This chairman, a very respected Queenslander, was brought on for their legal prowess and their knowledge and ability to bring good governance and independence to decisions that were in the interests of the sugar industry. Two of the other chairs belong to the growers, and two of the other chairs belong to millers. One of the miller chairs has now been held by Wilmar for some time, the other being held by a mill at Mackay which is a cooperative, a mill owned by growers. So, in effect, the 4,500 growers in the state had all their interests well preserved in the structure of this board.

Now we have a position where Wilmar are contesting the second miller position on the board. They have now gone ahead and acquired over 50 per cent of the milling power in Queensland, therefore giving them the power to successfully displace a cooperative miller from the board and replace it with themselves. There is a clear strategy involved here. It is a very simple strategy, and that is that Wilmar is moving—contrary to their undertakings here when the Foreign Investment Review Board considered their initial application—to take full control of these national assets, these sugar terminal assets that were given to the industry on a two-thirds/one-third basis by the state government of Queensland.

This is proof that we need to be very cautious about investment by foreign bodies whose interests are those of their shareholders, mostly non-Australian shareholders. Their interests are not our national interests. Their interests are not the interests of the 4,500 growers in Queensland. Their interests are across the world, and they are interested only in being a very profitable corporation. They are one of the biggest sugar millers in the world. They have processing capacity in Indonesia. There is great fear that, once they corner markets and control of the logistics at the ports, other millers will not be able to compete for berths, and we will have a travesty emerge in one of our very big, very important, very proud industries in my home state.

So I say to Wilmar if you are watching—and it will not matter if you are not, because I am going to flick you a copy of the transcript tomorrow—that I will be watching very, very closely and I will gather momentum to take any measure to stop you disrupting our sugar industry in this state, where it is not in the interests of the growers.