Senator Joyce today said he was baffled by the revelations that China is now the second biggest importer of food into Australia, behind New Zealand.
China does not have the occupational health and safety requirements that Australia does, does not have the labour conditions that Australia has and is currently utilising very poor country of origin branding laws to move their products on to Australian supermarket shelves and move Australian farmers off the shelves.
Senator Joyce and the Nationals are currently co-sponsoring a bill to increase the evidence of where a product is made and how much is Australian, so that Australian consumers can quickly identify at a glance whether they are supporting Australian farms and Australian working families or whether they are supporting the commerce of another nation.
We have got to stop putting ourselves out of a job. The short term gain of cheap imported products, mischievously packaged so that consumers are uncertain of where it has come from, does not offset the long term detriment of losing food security. Soon we will be relying on imported products in every corner of the house: white goods, televisions, mobile phones, computers, motor vehicles and we are going to rely on someone else to feed us.
Mr Rudd said that he wanted Australia to be a nation that makes things. Soon, not only we will not be making things, but we will lose our capacity to grow them. Australians get a deep sense of unease when they realise that the clean home grown product of Australia is being moved off the shelves for imported products, which in many instances have very dubious sanitary controls on them. One of the main reasons for rejection of imported products in the United States has been filth, which is an issue that Australians will not accept.
It is imperative that Australia gets clear branding laws that identify how much of the product is grown in Australia and what portion is attributable to manufacture or processing in Australia.
Media Inquiries
David Allender
07 4625 1500
0428 196 340