Media Release

1 May 2018: KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has labelled the findings detailed in the recent ACCC report into the dairy industry as being bittersweet and falling well short of what the industry needs.

Mr Katter said, “We welcome the findings and the recommendations, but the free market obsession is an intellectual cancer upon the Australian people and a con by the corporate CEO cabal that have no hesitation in paying themselves $10m-$25m a year. More than most people will earn in a lifetime, they earn in year.

“The freeing up of the milk market in Australia did not, and I emphasise did not, bring down the price of milk to the consumers. A supermarket has between 9 and 15 lines of milk product, ranging from 1 litre no fat milk to 2 litre full cream. Only one of those 15 lines is cheaper to the consumer.

“The average price of milk on the shelf has gone up over 30% whilst the free market policies took the poor old farmer down 30%; from 59c a litre to 41c litre on the first day of deregulation.

“There were 16,000 dairy farmers in Australia, now there are only 6,000.

Mr Katter said that policy has to be judged by its outcomes and that the outcomes for the Australian economy of the free market were failing.

“We know what free market actually means; it means free for the corporations to “mark it” up to whatever they feel like marking it up to.

“Talk about a free market when two corporations sell 95% of all the food in Australia and buy 95% of all the food in Australia. If that is a good outcome, then I am a lily pad leftie,” Mr Katter said.

“But even the good guys, the ACCC, they cannot bring themselves to restore to us the power which we had for nearly 100 years. To collectively bargain the price of our product.

“The recommendations in this report fall well short of the right to collectively bargain, which is enjoyed by almost every employee in Australia that works under an award – which is decided through arbitration.

“Nearly 90% of agriculture was priced through collective bargaining and arbitration. Exactly the same as every employee in Australia enjoys. And to talk about a free market when there are only two buyers and two sellers is an insult to the intelligence of every Australian, and marks you out as a complete imbecile.

“Yet both political parties in Canberra, every single member will vote for these policies which have been disastrous for the Australian economy. And of the Big 4 industries dairy production is off nearly 20%, sugar is down 17%, the cattle herd is down 25%. Australia has been a net importer of seafood for the last ten years on average, and an importer of fruit and vegetables, believe it or not, as well as being a net importer of pork.

“What should be the most successful food producing country on earth, now records a suicide every five days and has almost every rural industry producing less than 20 or 30 years ago”.

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