Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:
Will Rudd retain single desk if Growers want it? - Part II
Speaking to Federal Independent MP Tony Windsor, he told us that he has received a considerable number of completed polls back from growers.
Tony off his own bat posted out 24,000 polls to wheat growers around Australia asking them did they want to retain the single desk. However it seems that a number of growers have not received it. To give these growers time to get their poll by post and complete it he has extended the cut off date until 23rd of April.
If you are a registered Wheat grower and have not received your poll paper in the mail please contact Tony’s office immediately ph(02)67613080 or fax (02)67613080. The Polls are registered and can only be delivered to you by Australian Post. Once you have completed your poll you can fax it back to his office.
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Here’s what a couple of politicians have been saying about the Single Desk issue over the past week:
First of all we will deal with another Howard era Liberal Party Politician who will not listen to the people he represents.
Western Australian Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey (pictured left) Member for O’Connor an electorate that runs from Albany in the South to Geraldton in the North and takes in a good many of the states wheat growers.
Now bear in mind that the Western Australian Farmers Federation that represents most of the states wheat growers has already polled it’s wheat grower members and found that 70% want the Wheat Single desk retained.
In his submission to the Senate inquiry last week Wilson Tuckey, says not only should the Single Desk be scrapped but individual farmers should be free to export wheat in bulk directly to foreign markets under the new wheat export arrangements.
The member for O’Connor called for growers to be excluded from needing a license to export wheat direct to individual markets.
Mr Tuckey said if growers were prepared to do the work and take on the risks, then they did not need any protection to sell their own wheat under the new legislation.
Mr Tuckey said the solution therefore was to exclude individuals or corporations who wanted to export wheat produced on their own properties from the export accreditation requirements.
He said because they are not middlemen and if they take such a choice, they had the right to assume their own risk.
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Agmates Comment:
If nothing else you have to love Wilson for the fact that he’ll pursue his died in the wool true Liberal ethos that the free market “knows all” and is “never wrong” - even when it is against the will of a majority the people he represents.
Perhaps Wilson Tuckey should revisit Greg Crook’s online thoughts on professional wheat farmers ability to compete with professional grain traders.
Greg made this comment on the article where we exposed Wilson Tuckeys fellow Western Australian Liberal Senator Judith Adams (what is it with the western australian liberal party?) telling the Inquiry this “porky” - Adams tells Senate Inquiry WA Wheat Farmers want Single Desk GONE!
Part of what Greg Said:
Surely it wouldn’t be that they have a total gut full of increasing risk and debt or perhaps its because they are all bloody good professional farmers and nothing more nothing less.
Farm/ Farmer in the dictionary means “A tract of land used for agriculture or other industry; to cultivate ; to raise livestock,fish etc on a farm “
Nothing about being a bloody hot shot grain trader trying to outsmart the rest of the world and coming a gutser every second time while the grubs ate the back paddock out because he was at the computer all day!
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QLD Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce wrote to Agmates:
“Now, to another self-interested group talking about the benefits to the nation of deregulating the Single Desk: quite obviously, the only benefits are to those who will be left with a vertically integrated, regional monopoly of one of our nation’s major exports.
I am prepared to go double or nothing that this one will be at the expense of wheat growers in the majority and Australia in general. Unfortunately, I and many others feel we will have less success in stopping this one than we did stopping the private equity takeover of Qantas.
“With the removal of a single desk player from the wheat export market and its replacement by a vertically integrated monopoly, from receival to port to export, the position in the market and the grower is reduced.
“There will be no comparative market power within the wheat market place to bring a greater transparency and honesty to pricing. There is no capacity under part 3(a) for easy access to infrastructure for competition.
The recent battles which have been fought by Telstra to stop access by other carriers to telecommunications infrastructure should be a clear lesson about the inadequacies of the Trade Practices Act. Other participants are highly unlikely to be able to get a substantial foot hold in a market where the infrastructure is dominated by one player.
“All the new Wheat Bill will do is remove the legislation currently protecting growers from vertical integration by insisting that another player has access to a section of a market. It will also vastly reduce the bargaining capacity of most wheat growers.
“The philosophy of removing the bargaining power of the weak in favour of the strong, I thought, would be an anathema to the philosophy of the Labor Party; at least it was when they were talking about AWA’s at the last election.”
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Have Your Say!
Do you believe Individual Wheat Farmers should be able to market their own Wheat crop directly to foreign markets?
Leave your comment below or click on the blue word Comments to bring up the text entry box.
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Tags: Wheat
I am strongly in favour of retaining the single desk.
Wheat growers would obviously have much greater bargaining powers and price protection selling bulk wheat under a single desk rather than attempting to access markets individually.
Farmers do not have the time for this anyway.
Who needs enemies when we have the Liberal party ?
The party’s continual push to deregulate all and sundry is systematic of extremist Liberalism, a desire to have free markets at any expense and their belief that free markets are always better than any level of intervention. It doesn’t matter if they fail.
John Howard seemed to be able to keep the worse excesses of his party somewhat hidden but now he has gone it has become a common feature to see the old fashioned free marketers at work pushing their eighties agendas.
Wilson and his mates likely support the reliance by our economies on minimum rules for big banks, today in the US, as before a feature of stressed banks is to see central banks bail them out with tax payers funds while banks make public their losses and private their profits.
I wonder if Wilson will offer to bail wheat growers out if his party gets its way with single desk removal and is proved very wrong as the market collapses, or will he just say as Bill Heffernan did “they can just stew in their own juice”.
There is no way to find middle ground with philosophical troglodytes like those who seem to have found a home in the Liberal party, don’t they know we did not reelect them because we thought they were going too far with this rubbish.
Why Wilson Tuckey has been able to retain his seat in parliament while misrepresenting his constituency is a real puzzle.
When will the WA electorate finally get organized and give Wilson a big holiday !!
In Wilson Tuckey’s electorate of O Connor at the last federal election Tuckey won 71% of all electoral boxes in the wheat growing areas of O Connor.This is after a large campaign by the National Party to retain the single desk.
O’Connor supplies about 70% of Australia’s export wheat and I believe Queensland supplies approx. 1%.
Senator Judith Adams is a grain producer in O’Connor and as such is able to “read” the general feeling of producers. I am not a grain grower but do live in the O’Connor electorate and have seen a big swing away from the single desk over the last year or so.
PS. Tuckey got 45% primary Vote Nationals 15% in the last election.
G’day Laurence,
Mate thank you for your input. Living in Wilson Tuckey’s seat of O’Connor certainly gives you a closer insight into what is happening there.
I have wondered how, with him being so stridently against the Single desk (If that was common knowledge at the time) he won the seat in the wheat belt so easily.
Did Wilson Tuckey go to the last poll telling his wheat grower constituents that he fully supported the abolishion of the the Single Wheat desk?
I also had no idea that Senator Adams was a wheat grower from within his electorate. Although I did knew that they were close, and that probably explains why they are.
Maybe the majority of WA wheat growers do favor the abolition of the Single desk and Agmates has been a mile off the target?
Certainly the WAFarmers has stated that they polled WA wheat growers and 70% supported retention of the Single desk.
I and the agmates readers would be really interested in your thoughts on what is actually happening there in WA.
Cheers - Your Agmate - Steve