Senator JOYCE—You see that it is vitally important that we have changes to trade practices laws if this bill is to be made somewhat fair?

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Mr Hoskinson—Yes.

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Senator JOYCE—You would say that it would be a rational thing to now go forward and find the appropriate trade practices lawyers to assist you in drafting those changes before this committee comes to a conclusion and certainly before this bill goes forward?

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Mr Blight—The point is that, if we all know that that is what has got to happen, isn’t it the responsibility of the government to investigate that, after all the comments that have been made?

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Senator JOYCE—Certainly. For how long have you been working for WEMA? I am referring to the payment issue that Senator O’Brien brought up. For how long have you actually been working on this project?

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Mr Blight—I think I started about last July.

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Senator JOYCE—We are now in April, so we are heading towards a year, so it is not unreasonable that you would expect some form of payment.

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Mr Blight—I would have thought that was fair.

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Senator JOYCE—Do you think that when people start trying to embarrass you with questions on income they really do not have a leg to stand on on other issues?

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Mr Blight—I think it is intrusive and absolutely unnecessary.

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Senator HEFFERNAN—Can I go back in all that bullshit talk. I just want to ask a question but I cannot, Mr Chairman.

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Senator JOYCE—With the matrix of assessment on grain, do you see that, if there is nothing in the legislation about the assessment matrix of grain for monopolies to pick and choose—for instance, someone is a bit out on moisture, another is a bit out on protein, and you have cliff pricing, where they are just a little bit out, and you kick them over the cliff and take a discount on it—once you have all the grain in a pool from all the people that you have touched in the district, you have the capacity to make a lot of money?

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Senator HEFFERNAN—Under the present arrangement.

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Senator JOYCE—Yes, that is the current matrix. Do you think we need a stronger matrix of assessment of grain in this legislation?

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Senator HEFFERNAN—That is under the present arrangement.

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Senator JOYCE—The question I am asking of you Mr Hoskinson, Mr Ridley—

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Senator HEFFERNAN—That is what you said. It was in the Hansard.

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Senator JOYCE—I am talking about cliff pricing that can come into play after this goes through.

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Senator HEFFERNAN—That happens now.

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Mr Hoskinson—Clearly, without a national pool, we cannot have many of the benefits of it. The pricing of our grain, according to quality starters et cetera, will completely disappear. We are going to move back around 25 years to when we had two grades—the FAQ system, which was fair, average quality, and a second grade. We will clearly move back to something like that. It may not have the cliff prices that were there before but there will be no great bonuses for performance either.

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Senator JOYCE—Do you have any money put aside to employ trade practices lawyers to draft up the appropriate changes to the legislation?

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Mr Blight—No.

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Mr Ridley—The only money I have put aside happens to be in my pocket.

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Senator HEFFERNAN—Fair enough—thanks. No-one wants to answer the question of how we fix—

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Senator JOYCE—Because there is not the capacity here to do it. It is a trade practices law question.

Senator JOYCE—Do you think that it is necessary for there to be a port access clause in the current legislation?

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Mr Bradley—Yes, I do, because I can see that there could be difficulties there unless it was dealt with.

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Senator JOYCE—Why couldn’t they have just relied on part IIIA of the Trade Practices Act for access to that infrastructure?

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Mr Bradley—That is probably a technical question that is a little bit beyond me.

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Senator JOYCE—Okay. You will see where I am going in a second.

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Mr Bradley—The Trade Practices Act does not seem to have had too much application in the grains industry in the past.

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Senator JOYCE—It is about to get a bit. If we need a special clause for port access because part IIIA is not sufficient, why shouldn’t we have a special clause for receival access in the legislation?

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Mr Bradley—In Western Australia the grain ports are exclusively operated by CBH, but anybody can go into the receival business at any time. Farmers in Western Australia are actually becoming competitors to CBH themselves in providing their own receival facilities with their on-farm storage. With the access to international markets, if CBH does not provide the services wanted, I think it will only be a matter of time before the bigger traders invest in a big way in providing receival facilities in competition with CBH. So I believe the market will address that problem itself if you give it one or two years.

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Senator JOYCE—CBH gave information to the inquiry in Perth that they have 95 per cent of the receival infrastructure in Western Australia. Is that your view of it?

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Mr Bradley—I do not know exactly the percentage there, but I imagine it would be reducing over time and I expect there will be competition in receival facilities in the future. But CBH have more than enough storage to provide for even the biggest crop that WA can produce.

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Senator JOYCE—With this legislation, are you seeing signs of new people or organisations coming in to set up receival infrastructure in WA, and can you give examples of where that is happening?

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Mr Bradley—Only that I know that silo makers just cannot keep up with the demand in Western Australia for on-farm storage. You have to order well in advance.

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Senator JOYCE—But that is on-farm storage. No-one actually pays you for putting grain in your own silos. They pay you for—

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Mr Bradley—Well, buyers do, yes.

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Senator JOYCE—They pay you when they buy it off you. Can you explain how there is such a vastly different view on whether we need a single desk between the Western Australian Farmers Federation and you?

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Mr Bradley—Our view is that it did not work, and we do not think the advantages that the WA farmers believed were there ever materialised.

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Senator JOYCE—But the evidence that has been given over and over again is overwhelmingly that Western Australians do not want the single desk, yet when the major farming organisation representing the most growers turns up they say they do. How do we explain that difference?

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Mr Bradley—I do not know how to explain it. All I can tell you is what our point of view is.