Farmers threatened
PEOPLE around the Herbert, Burdekin and Townsville are only too aware of the fierce struggle that our cane growers have been through to have a choice in the marketer of their economic interest sugar.
They want to avoid being taken back to the dark ages more than a century ago before the Ryan Labor government worked with the Federal Government of the day to bring in a suite of measures that set our sugar industry on a path of stable growth that was to be the cornerstone of regional economies right through to the 21st century.
The industry was regulated then for good purpose to among other things avoid the exploitation of farmers and workers by the mill owners of the early colonial era.
The industry was fully deregulated by the 2006 season with our marketing system guided by a Memorandum of Understanding and an agreement between mill owners and peak industry bodies.
It wasn’t long before the weaknesses in those guiding agreements were discovered by the new multinational owners of CSR’s mills and refineries.
It was to be revealed that 100 years later human nature hadn’t changed as the new multinational mill owners sought to take control of the marketing arrangements back in April 2014 and caused the greatest upheaval in growermill owner relations that the current generation of industry players has ever seen.
The Commonwealth Code of Conduct under National Competition Policy was the game changer that reinforced Queensland Grower Choice legislation and provided the fair negotiating framework under which a new Cane Supply Agreement was ultimately struck for the Herbert just a few days before the 2017 crush- ing season started. Now a NSW senator who has had nothing to do with the industry and has never met representatives of the growers has moved a motion in the Senate to disallow the Code of Conduct that serves sugar industry participants with a set of rules just as national traffic regulations provide road rules for the safety for road users.
Canegrowers Herbert River calls on every Queensland and federal senator to consider what is in the national interest and to reject this threat to the Code of Conduct.
Anything less is a sell- out of Queensland’s cane farming families and a betrayal of the communities they support.
This latest threat to our region’s growers has Wilmar’s fingerprints all over it.
The multi- party Senate inquiry in 2015 unanimously recommended the code to safeguard against the kind of conduct that caused untold misery to the Herbert and Burdekin in particular.
We don’t want Queensland and Commonwealth senators sinking the boot again into our Aussie farmers.
MICHAEL PISANO Chairman of Directors, Canegrowers Herbert River