WHEAT EXPORT MARKETING BILL 2008
WHEAT EXPORT MARKETING (REPEAL AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL 2008
Second Reading
Speech
Senator JOYCE (Queensland) (7.39 p.m.)—I would like to acknowledge the work that Senator Nash did in the committee stage of the Wheat Export Marketing Bill 2008. Due to circumstances in her family, Senator Nash cannot be here tonight. So, in my contribution to this bill tonight, I speak also on her behalf.

The defeat of this legislation should be a complete no-brainer. It is quite apparent that, in the current drafting of the legislation, a range of issues have not been thought through. Even in discussions with Mr Woods this afternoon regarding sections of the bill, such as the accreditation scheme, I have seen that this legislation as it stands has holes all through it. So, if on nothing else but a technical process and the competency of a government to bring forward legislation that has been thought through, especially with something as contentious as wheat exports, this legislation is lacking.

If you do not want to give competitors a free kick in front of our trade goalpost, the need to defeat this legislation is obvious. There is no question about it. We have the ridiculous concept that now, with 60 per cent of our world’s wheat being purchased by single-desk buyers, Australia will go forward. We hear that 80 to 100 people are looking at becoming accredited, while a number of other people in the same room will be selling the same product from the same area. There is only one way the price of Australian wheat will go, and that will be reflected back to the grower. Of course, they are the ones who lose. The trader picks up the margin on the way through, but the grower picks up the final result. So this legislation should be defeated on that scenario alone.

If you believe in open and transparent government that fully ventilates and gets to the end of contentious issues and that gives alternate models, such as the Wheeler model, a chance to go forward and succeed, then this legislation should be defeated. If you believe that the Ralph report should have been tabled so that its outcome could be seen and thereby give a reflection of a true and transparent government dealing with its people, then you should defeat this legislation, because the government has not presented that report. If you believe in legislation reflecting the democratic will of the people, especially those whom it will affect to the greatest extent, then this legislation should be defeated. We know that, overwhelmingly, the Australian wheat grower does not want to lose the single desk.

If you believe in removing monopolies, then you need to understand that this legislation is actually creating them. Those who vote for this legislation are going to create regional monopolies that will have a huge impact on where the marketing of one of our prime exports goes forward from this point. I am sure that there are people in the chamber tonight who know that what they are doing is not quite right. They know in the pit of their stomach that they are about to hand over something to our major trading competitors in the United States. If they are honest with themselves in their quieter moments, they will know that they should not support this legislation. But they are being driven towards it. The question that everybody is asking tonight is: driven towards it by whom?

Why do Australians want to associate with farmers and why are they proud of them? We are proud of farmers because, for very little return, they do a job that is decent and honourable. It is decent and honourable in that the efforts that farmers put into their endeavours lead to food being placed on the table. One of the key things we should look at tonight is the effect that this legislation will have in reducing the affordability of wheat and making its growing less worthwhile. As that reduces, fewer people will grow wheat. As fewer people grow wheat, there will be less of it on the world market. With less wheat on the world market, there will be less food to feed people, and people will starve—especially now, when we have very short supplies of grain.

We are playing with a mechanism. We are playing into the hands of monopolies and multinational organisations that will certainly extract a premium; but they will extract that premium, at the end of the food chain, from those who are most exposed. Do not think for a moment that this legislation is not going to have ramifications outside of Australia. Do not think for a moment that, with less wheat being produced, somebody in Africa or in South East Asia will not be affected by the decisions you make in this chamber tonight.

It is peculiar in the extreme when I see people such as the Greens doing a 180 degree turn. They are now helping a multinational extract an unreasonable premium from the market to the detriment of the most vulnerable in the world community. They are supporting this. There is something that is a little bit insidious about this whole process.

We keep referring back to the AWB. This is the life raft that people attach themselves to—the disgraced AWB. That is it; that is the raison d’etre for going down this path. However, I never hear people talking about the disgraced Japanese or the disgraced Germans. People that Australia has gone to war against seem to get a fuller reprieve than an organisation that, since that point in time, has removed the people who were involved. It is an inanimate body which you have tried to place a certain conscience on, not so much to put a moral position onto that organisation, but to remove yourselves from the same moral question. It is a convenient argument, but it is a shallow argument.

There are so many views that are quoted, but no-one wants to be absolutely transparent with the numbers of Australian wheat growers who want to maintain the single desk. It is their livelihood; it is their income. It was the Labor Party that went to the last election and won it on the premise of bringing a fairer outcome to working families. We learnt our lesson—they won; we lost. But it is complete insincerity and a complete change of heart which really cuts through the absolute philosophical core of what you are, that you are now going to persecute other working families that you do not identify with as much because they might be a little bit different to you. Were those working families that were out there today the wrong type of working families? Do you want another type of working family? Do you have a very specific type of working family which is the only working family you wish to help? Those working families today are obviously under immense stress and this change is going to be reflected through them.

Let us just walk through one of the events that can occur from here. Currently we are going to have the Wheat Export Authority granting licences. I have asked about this tonight and there is no mechanism in the granting of a Wheat Export Authority licence to ensure that a person has unconditional access to a port at a certain price. That is to be determined by commercial terms and by the port. So what we will have now—and this is another flaw in your legislation—is the ownership of the grain transferring to the trader upon the transferral of goods, even though the payment has not been made. So the agent takes delivery of the crop from the farmer, who is hocked up to the eyeballs and is hoping for that last crop. The crop comes under the ownership of the agent. The agent takes it to the export facility. The export facility says, ‘We will export it at these terms,’ which are obviously out of line and unprecedented. So then the agent starts going broke bec