Agmates

What a dreadful way for Labor to introduce itself to wheat growers around Australia. Underhanded and never to be trusted by rural people, together with the Liberal party who have proven to be out of touch and driven by extremist and disproven ideology.

I must say at this point a big thank you to Peter Cannon and his Wheat Growers Action Group. The gloves must come off Peter, it will be imperative we take action to secure the future of our industry and communities, farmers, fuel suppliers, machinery suppliers, workers will all need to re think their allegiances in the world of politics.

While the rest of the world has long recognized that farmers can only obtain reasonable returns by a level of intervention our government still adheres to the old worn out idea that markets operate better with minimal intervention.

And the US has recently passed a new five year farm bill to give their farmers some $US60 billion dollars per annum, the EU almost 70 billions, and Japan about US 50 billion, the financial sectors receive it is estimated about 1 Trillion ( I do not know how many zeros) worth to stabilize the little dip we are all feeling.

The behavior of the world in the face of the financial melt down is increasingly interventionist, and without that intervention we may well have been much worse off. It seems when it suits us John Maynard Keynes is not far away and when we are doing well we are all free marketers.

For the new Rudd Government this will very seriously dent their credibility. As the production system responds to high prices with increased production the future of grain prices can only be toward the downside. As there now will be competition in our export markets by exporters the premiums obtained by our single desk will simply disappear. The result could easily be something like the milk industry, a reduction of production and producers, much closer to domestic supply, this will further “adjust the bush” with some towns which depend on grain, as in milk, shrinking.

The Rudd Government and their mates the Liberals will be contributing to the food crisis by forcing sub optimal returns on the very producers who grow it.

And if the National Party think the Libs are worth getting into bed with they will not be surprised to find a third party…Labor in there as well. I do not think Australia’s wheat growers will appreciate the proposition.

Rowell Walton

Grain Grower

Queensland

Both Rudd & Burke,the ALP AND LIB’S— HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT THE WHEAT INDUSTRY AND ITS MARKETING REQUIREMENTS.

We spoke to Min Burke on Tuesday about WHO,in the way of Farmer groups, or even a Farmer, had he spoken to– answer, he said a farmer at BROKEN HILL, now where in the Hell is wheat grown at Broken Hill.

This Bill is a TREASONABLE ACT being leveled at Australian wheat growers and ultimately at the entire Australian population.Mr Burke has not consulted with with farmers or farmer groups.

Look at the RUDD Government’s pre-election commitments and now what is happening, is worlds apart.There are many farmers who remember life before the single desk and are pleading that we do not return to those miserable days.

There will be food shortages as a result of this Bill along with the total decimation of rural Australia.

Those in Parliament need to grow a backbone and throw out this anti-Australian legislation and start representing Australian wheat growers instead of the world grain traders and American farmers who are rubbing their hands together in delight with anticipation at what is about to happen.

Peter Cannon –WGAG

Peter, this is the theft of some $200 million from wheat groweres per annum, by the ALP and the Libs who are supposed to represent the weekest in the system.

They will need a lot more than that to tidy up the mess before this is finished, I have allways thougt Labor needed some level of respect for the fact that they were prepared to intervene in our markets to obtain some level of fairness for farmers,and they have proven such a great success for so long with the single desk. I now know why so many of my freinds have no respect at all for them.

RW

I think this bill is ushering in a vastly different concept of farming for this country, we are now well on the road to a corporate dominated Agricultural sector.

Along with this bill ,apart from the loss of our choice to operate collectively to market our product , comes the complete loss of influence over varietal selection and research (although we are still expected to fund it), increasingly limited choice for varieties because of the regionalisation that will come with this new legislation, and increased costs for access to varieties.

How much market power will a farmer have when the only varieties available limit the grower to domestic livestock end users for instance? Contract law states that a contract should be a mutual agreement between the interested parties, I wonder how many of us have seen such a contract when dealing with the trade. I know all of my dealings have been one sided, thats because there’s more sellers than buyers, Mr Burkes bill does nothing in my view to change this situation.

NACMA is a traders organization. Do these people seriously expect farmers will get fair treatment when the whole chain is controlled by the traders? Wilson Tuckey said today 6/6/08 that any problems could be sorted out through the Trade Practices Act, but only as a last resort. Best of luck to anyone that wants to take that on. How many wheat farmers does Wilson Tuckey represent anyway? He also said today that the bill fitted the Liberal ideal of market economics…… the “free” market.

That and National Competition policy, both should be listed in any dictionary under “O” for oxymoron.

This bill is so outrageous and incomprehensible, in fact it is a joke.

How Politicians that KNOW NOTHING ABOUT GRAIN PRODUCTION DECIDE FOR US THE FUTURE OF OUR INDUSTRY WITHOUT ADEQUATE AND PROPER CONSULTATION, thus putting the industry in a perilous situation is just unconceivable and ludicrous.

They are feeding us like lambs to the slaughter, straight into the hands of the multinationals whose sole interests are profits and shareholders.

That means for the grain grower, sourcing the resource of grain at the lowest possible price.
Guess who misses out? The GRAIN GROWER who doesn’t stand a chance, especially when our inputs are skyrocketing daily.

What it will mean is that growers will turn to something else or be put out of business. We just hope they are happy with their decision to go against 80% of growers and destroy Rural Australia and neglect a starving World.

I, for sure am never voting Liberal again. The Nationals are the only party that seems to be listening and have a conscience. Will this Government want to pay the compensation bill for the Grain Growers it puts out of business? Will it pay the damage bill to the towns in Rural Australia that rely on the grain growers?

Maybe the Government might have to start subsidizing growers as they do in the US!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at how deregulation has treated the dairy industry and if that is any gauge to go by then only a hand full of wheat farmers will be left in 10 years.

The only tool that the aussie wheat farmer has is the single desk to protect us from the subsidized EU & US.

Now look at the way that the cost of food has jumped over the last year and this is a direct result of the subsidized EU & US distorting the market. The world has had cheep food for the last 30 years and now that we have a chance to finally be paid the true value for our grain the big multi national grain traders are trying to get a bigger cut of the cake than they deserve.

Blind Fred could see this coming but Kevin 07 now - has ‘Burke the Jerk’ trying to pull off a ‘back door’ on the aussie wheat farmer. WE the aussie wheat farmer are not that blind. That is why we are fighting for an orderly wheat marketing system. THE SINGLE DESK to stay in place.

You don’t know what you have got till you lose it.
Thanks
Stewart Day

I paid $1560.00 for a tonne of DAP yesterday and a $1.69 for diesel and am now faced with being totally ripped off for my wheat crop by all the emerging parasites that are going to take control of our crop by a process of stealth advocated by the Liberals and Tony Burke.

Professor Fells, another bum sitting academic failure, permitted Incitec to merge with Pivot. My shares have gone up because there is a new monopoly fertiliser cartel. My fertiliser has also gone up by 300%. I buy a lot more tonnage of fertiliser than the pitiful few Pivot shares I own so I’m being screwed by all the city based speculators bludging on the grain growers and trading futures. Where is the grower control?

Glyphosate has gone from $80.00 per drum to $360.00 with a story being put around by merchants that China is responsible. It was supposed to run out in February. If you are silly enough to pay for it you can buy all you want. Grain prices have risen so the multi-nats have made a calculated decision to rip us off even before the doubtful crop is harvested.

Rural Australia will have to become radical to survive. Rudd’s got rid of all drought aid in the budget. What we need to do as farmers is to stop the flow of food to the cities. Let them know what price rises are about and let Rudderless and Gizzard apologise to their power base, the unionists, teachers, public servants and unemployed for inflation and even higher interest rates because of massive food price rises.

Farmers are going to have to get organised into a powerful political and economic force to survive. If Rudd gets rid of the orderly marketing of wheat which he will, we as growers will have to regroup and take full control of our own industries like Rudd’s factions and the unions.

This organisation will not only be for the selling of produce but we will have to organise our own exclusive finance house and import our own chemicals and fertiliser and even fuel. No longer should our sons,daughters and grandchildren the future of agriculture in Australia be subjected to the insolvency, humility and bastardry being purposely imposed on us by insensitive governments, politicians, bureaucrats and bankers under the gloomy pretense of them delivering responsible economic policy.

Unfortunately the Fabians are alive and well. The real pity is that half of them are Liberals from the business end of town.

Today on the ABC Insiders program the debate centred around whether the ALP government is prepared to “intervene” on behalf of the car industry and retain a tariff on imports of vehicles.

It is said that the Productivity Commission are apposed to the retention of protection and also apposed to the development of a green car by Australian Industry with some government intervention….they prefer to import one.

I think the government need to begin by restructuring the PC to become more interested in developing industry policy which maintains and develops Australia’s Industry.

Manufacturing and agricultural policy driven toward efficiency and the future, where both the need to retain an industrial capacity and an agricultural base which has as cornerstones the idea that a decentralized population base where the whole nation shares in the spoils of its success.

The proposition to remove the Single Desk from the wheat industry is premature and incompetent; its removal would be well supported by the PC, which has itself been previously restructured through time from the old Tariff Board, to the Industries Assistance Commission and finally the Productivity Commission.

Their desire to support industry has declined through its various restructures, all restructures conducted by government in a deliberate effort to give an organization philosophically directed toward extreme free markets, then the government can lean on their advice in the face of the media.

It should be noted that the deputy leader of the opposition, Julie Bishop indicated they would be in favour of the PC recommendation to remove tariffs….and the Nationals want to get into bed with them!!

She said the Nationals had agreed to disagree about our single desk….this agreeing with the position of the opposition , is prostituting the reason for your party, a different philosophy. The Nationals should have walked away from the co-alition in defence of all wheat growers around Australia.

If the Nationals become one, the political problem for those of us who support intervention like single desks will have become just one step larger.

rw

So what if the Australian Wheat Board paid some bribes to Middle Easterners to secure a market for our wheat.

What guarantee is Rudd going to give us that those traders who replace the single desk will not do the same thing. The bribe system is the only way of entry into these markets and guess who will be subsidising the new unaccounted for bribes. The farmers.

These bribes will now be factored into the price we obtain for our produce. The traders will account for the bribes as advertising or promotion costs and will claim them as legitimate tax deductions.

I contend that the subsidies given to our competing growers from other countries by their governments can also be construed as bribes as they are fundamentally undermining the forces of free marketing.

At least the AWB had a degree of accountability the multitude of delinquent traders wont. The AWB bribes scandal beat up has been nothing more than a ploy being used by Liberal and Labor to put into affect their hidden agendas.
TW

This nation was built by the sweat and blood of good men and women. People as hard as nuggets!

The politicians of those days were Independent People who built our political system, gave us our constitution, led us to federation, and served their electorate well, without fear nor favour, and in my view, the system has been hijacked by self interested party politicians who will have you believe they are the only thing saving you from non existent crisis to a politically generated crisis.

It’s a con job. Nothing good is ever going to happen in this country until such time as we realise this and vote them OUT. Vote for Independent Polies and you just might see a difference.

However it’s my opinion that Aussies are so brain whashed they can’t see the tree’s for the forest.
God Bless. Terry

Dismantling the single desk will remove one of Australia’s major marketing tools. Isn’t the fact that the desk was under continual attack and criticism from the U.S enough evidence of how effective it was in securing the best possible price for Australian growers.

We only have to look at the AWB bribes scandal, where after the bribery allegations were leveled, the U.AS acted with lightning speed to try and replace our wheat orders even after we had fought along side them in the war against terror.

MAKE NO MISTAKE, ONCE THE SINGLE DESK IS REMOVED AUSTRALIAN’S WHEAT MARKET WILL SOON BE MANIPULATED BY THE PUPPET STRINGS OF MUCH LARGER MULTINATIONAL FORCES.

IT WILL BE A DISASTER for the Australian grain industry pitting grower against grower, region against region etc while driving prices down to the delight of our competitors.

Warren Skinner
Grain Grower
New South Wales

Come on people. This nonsense about the sky falling in because of the loss of the single desk has got to stop some day. You can still sell your wheat to the AWB if you want to. And if someone else offers a better price, sell it to them instead. The new wheat marketing act is a done deal. It’s over. Move with the times, you never know, you might be pleasantly surprised!

The comments by field correspondent are only slightly misguided.

AWB profits went to pool participants and shareholders respectively, if you don’t believe me go and read the constitution.

WA growers actually benefited from pooling as it allowed the AWB to make up orders to size and quality standards. When AWB grower corporate model came into being in 2000 WA growers held the largest proportion of B class shares, this model relied on Grower support to remain in grower hands.

It amazes me that people have been so critical of AWB for perceived notions of conflict of interest, here in NSW Graincorp really did have conflict of interest issues, doesn’t matter now, the company has been stolen from growers through Public listing so the problem has been solved ,and now with Burke’s legislation Graincorp has a monopoly on transport,receival ,handing and port facilities up and down the East Coast.

Finally the Chicago daily spot price is no indication at all of the value of your wheat. Under this new legislation growers wheat will sit in growers storage until the trade is ready to take and it and growers will wear the cost.