Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce said the current inquiry had raised serious concerns about the proposed repeal of the Single Desk and the protection mechanisms for small growers against discriminatory conduct from the traders who will dominate the market.

"As the receival of grain is dominated by those who have the wheat receival capital infrastructure, there is nothing in the legislation to prevent a centralised regional monopoly to pay two completely different prices for exactly the same product, on two separate trucks, arriving within five minutes of each other.

"Similar to the way anchor tenants are subsidised by smaller shops in the shopping mall, smaller growers will subsidise the returns of the large.

"The legislation is silent in dealing with the discriminatory practices of monopolies or oligopolies and the ACCC has been powerless to help smaller horticultural producers as they deal with two major retailers. So, why will they be able to help smaller wheat growers after the current transparencies and single product single price is lost?

"It seems perverse a Labor party could recognise the discriminatory bargaining position in the former IR legislation, which was so disliked by the Australian public that we lost the election, then the same Labor Party could actually instigate legislation which ignores this principle in the repeal of the Single Desk.

"There are issues needed to be addressed to deal with cost to WA wheat growers but this legislation has thrown the baby out with the bathwater and international Single Desk buyers (the majority of Australian sales) and our US competitors must be revelling in our stupidity.

"The loss of classification, international marketing advantages, domestic fairness and transparency and the ability to hold over grain to fill next season's markets will be lost for the traders' prerogative that is profit on traded volume rather than value.

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