Senator JOYCE—Mr Clarke, you said in your statement, ‘We in Western Australia do not see it as a problem.’ You are referring to port access and a range of other issues. You are speaking on behalf of Western Australia. Do you see that as a problem, considering you only represent 200 growers, if your numbers are correct?

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Mr Clarke—We can only give you our point of view, and that is what we are here to do. From our point of view, we do not see it as as large a problem as perhaps you do. I do not mean any disrespect by that, Senator Joyce. You have your concerns, and I am very well aware of your concerns. I am not as concerned as you are, but that does not mean I discount what you are saying.

Senator JOYCE—Thanks for that, Mr Clark. I have got a couple of other questions. With your knowledge of Western Australia, do you believe there are or have you heard of any moves afoot to corporatise CBH?

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Mr Clarke—Yes. There have been some moves afoot to corporatise CBH. It appears to have gone back towards the cooperative principles by the election of the last directors.

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Senator JOYCE—That would be a big windfall gain, wouldn’t it, to have a share in a corporatised entity that had the monopoly on the export of wheat in Western Australia?

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Mr Clarke—At this stage it is not corporatised.

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Senator JOYCE—But there are moves afoot, or there is certainly talk in that direction.

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Mr Clarke—Senator, you are correct. There have been some mumblings. There has been something in the press. It is a very big ask to corporatise CBH, because you have to get 75 per cent of the vote to corporatise CBH at this time, and at this time I do not think the numbers are there to do it.

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Senator JOYCE—I bet you they will be after they realise there is a bucket of money if they corporatise a monopoly.

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Mr Clarke—That is speculation, and I cannot really answer it.

Senator JOYCE—You realise that AWB started as a co-op and was corporatised, and apparently that is the vehicle that everybody has got a problem with. If you believe AWB is a problem then are you going to end up with the same problem in WA?

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Mr Clarke—I think the board of directors of CBH, rightly so, have taken that on board, because they are planning to restructure the CBH Group so that the storage and handling stay in the cooperative, and the commercial side, as in the selling of the grain, will be separated from the storage and handling.

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Senator JOYCE—They understand that you have got to disrupt the chance of vertical integration to get a better return for the grower. Is that correct?

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Mr Clarke—I would not go so far as that. What we are trying to avoid in Western Australia is the problem that we had with the AWB—the conflict of interest, when CBH is supposed to be the accumulator and the seller of grain. The board of CBH are trying to address that by segregating the company into different sections, and I even believe they are talking of taking the whole grain-buying part of it and putting it in a different building. I am aware of it, and they are trying to resolve this problem.

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Senator JOYCE—I understand exactly what they are trying to do. They are trying to stop what would come from the vertically integrated monopoly. Don’t you think it is peculiar that CBH are thinking about that to protect their own growers, but we are not thinking about that in this legislation?

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Mr Clarke—I am not sure what you mean, Senator.

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Senator JOYCE—There is nothing in this legislation that protects against vertically integrated monopolies, which is what CBH is going to try and protect their own growers from, but once this legislation goes through it is open season for the regional monopolies.

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Mr Clarke—The thing with the CBH Group in Western Australia is it is totally owned by the growers.

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Senator JOYCE—At the moment.

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Mr Clarke—At the moment it is and for the foreseeable future it is.

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Senator JOYCE—But we have just got on the record now that there are moves afoot for the corporatisation of CBH.

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Mr Clarke—The ‘moves afoot’ is your interpretation not my interpretation. There have been discussions.

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Senator JOYCE—We just said it a second ago.

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CHAIR—Quite clearly, I did hear your line of questioning, Senator Joyce. Mr Clarke did say that there was talk going on and that he had heard talk. I do not think it is fair to cajole him into a corner and say that he is certainly a part of the conversation that is definitely going to happen.

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Senator JOYCE—I am not saying he is part of the conversation. I am going to go to some evidence you gave, Mr Clarke, over in Western Australia. You said:

Basically what we are saying now is that there has been ample time to put forward evidence and what you think about this marketing system. Senator O’Brien was the shadow minister at the time …

And so on. Then, talking about a PowerPoint presentation that you put forward, you said:

I have personally presented it probably five or six times in different areas, and we got a reasonably good result.

I have been going through the minutes of those meetings that you went to, and they do not seem to show a very good result at all. At the Avon Valley zone Western Australian Farmers meeting on 9 February 2007, after your presentation, the motion was put ‘that the Avon Valley zone of Western Australian Farmers endorses the principles involved in the Western Australian Farmers wheat marketing model’—which is not yours—‘and requests grain councils to progress it further’. That was moved. The minutes of the Upper Great Southern zone meeting where you gave a presentation record a motion ‘that the Upper Great Southern zone of Western Australian Farmers supports the wheat export marketing model put by the Western Australian Farmers grain section’. That was passed. At another meeting, in the Corrigin/Lake Grace zone, the motion was put ‘that this zone supports a marketing structure that maximises the long-term net pool profit under a single-desk, single-seller, not-for-profit company’. None of those are actually your motions, so how can you possibly say:

I have personally presented it probably five or six times in different areas, and we got a reasonably good result.

That sounds like a pretty bad result.

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Mr Clarke—At the one at the Lake Grace/Corrigin zone, there were only a couple of votes in it, and there were people at the meeting that probably had not been at a meeting for a long time—

Members of the audience interjecting—

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CHAIR—Order! To those that are listening: one of your colleagues earlier on today made a submission and put a presentation to the committee and, when he lost his position on the board, there certainly was not laughter and giggling from us up the front. So I would urge you, if you are going to have a giggle, to please walk outside. In all fairness, I think it is only a matter of respect both ways. Carry on, Mr Clarke.

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