Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Let me now be very specific on the issue of the report that came down the week before last, Madam Deputy Speaker. I quote from page xx of the report:

The ACCC has not found any evidence ... In particular, there is no across-the-board evidence to suggest that retail prices for fresh products are going up by a greater percentage than farm-gate prices.

Milk pre deregulation was 53c a litre to the farmer and it is now 43c a litre, so that price has gone down. The price was 115c to the consumer. It is now 184c. So that is a lie with respect to milk. Let me move on to sugar. It was pre deregulation $350 a tonne. For the last six years it has been $274 a tonne. It is now $344 a tonne. So the price to the farmer has gone down considerably. The price to the consumer has gone up from $1,115 a tonne to $1,300 a tonne, so the margin has certainly widened dramatically there. Potatoes were $1,100 a tonne. They are now $1,500 a tonne. The price to the farmer was $500 a tonne. It is still $500 a tonne. The price of eggs to the farmer was 117c a dozen 15 years ago. It is now 120c a dozen. It was 185c a dozen to the consumer. It is now 394c a dozen to the consumer. These are not my figures; they are in ABS catalogue 6403—just to help out Mr Samuel and his officers.

We keep talking in figures and statistics and I do not think that people really understand that, so I purchased a kilogram of potatoes and took them along to the tribunal. Today I purchased them for $2.46 a kilogram. I rang up my farmers and found out what today’s price was. It was 62c a kilogram—so 62c a kilogram to the farmers and $2.45 a kilogram to the consumers for potatoes, the most prolific thing that we eat. Today I went and purchased a litre of milk, something that every Australian has every day. It was $1.99. The farmers got 51c, the packagers got 15c—so 66c—while Woolworths and Coles took $1.99. This milk and all of the other items I have here with me will be very valuable to Mr Samuel. In fact, I will give them to him for free.

Today I bought eggs. The farmers get $1.40 a dozen and consumers are charged $4.85 a dozen. This is shameful. This is unbelievable. I note these are not items that perish, unlike the bananas or mangoes that I could bring along which might perish in some cases. Sugar does not perish and, if you wished, you could keep it for 10 years. The farmers and the refiners get 39c a kilogram. Today I bought sugar. I and the consumers are paying $1.35. These are 300-plus per cent mark-ups.

Once upon a time, in the case of sugar, eggs and milk, we went along, as did the trade union movement in Australia, to a tribunal and that tribunal said what was a fair price to pay farmers—for milk in this case—what was a fair price that consumers should pay for it and what was a fair price for retailers to get. The minute that tribunal was taken away the price of milk paid to the farmers went down by 20c a litre—one-third of their money was taken off them. The price to the consumers went up by 42c a litre. So when the tribunal was taken away and the fairness test removed we went to the free market, suddenly the price went through the roof. I will not continue on with that, but it was the same with eggs and sugar, and I could quote the figures. I present those cases to indicate that what Mr Samuel has said is totally incorrect.

I refer to the second thing that he has said, and once again there is no excuse for this as these things are all catalogued, and I have already referred to catalogue 6403. I again quote from the report:

Statistics analysed by the ACCC suggest that Coles and Woolworths account for approximately 70 per cent of packaged grocery sales in Australia ...

That was repeated by Mr Samuel to the national media. That 70 per cent in itself is disgraceful. I think for other countries the closest to Australia’s figure was 40 per cent and there were four or five people in Great Britain who held that. There is no country on earth that has anything like the concentration of market power that Australian has, and it was a committee of this place that decided that and then recommended doing nothing.

Let me come back to his statement of 70 per cent. Surely he in his position must know, given he has made that national statement of this nature, that in 1991 Woolworths and Coles had 50.5 per cent of the market and by 1998, according to the government of the time and their committee of inquiry, the big two had 64 per cent of the market. If you want to take the AC Nielsen series, which probably has the more accurate figures, then it was 68 per cent in 1998—but I do not care whether it is 64 or 74 or whatever. In 2002, according to the AC Nielsen series and according to Retail World, the bible as far as this goes, it was 76.7 per cent. Woolworths have claimed that they have had a 10 per cent market share growth almost every year since—and I hold up, as document No. 3, a press release from Woolworths saying this year they expect a ‘10 per cent market share growth’. In 2002 they claimed an 11 per cent market growth.

I want to be very fair here: you must take out CPI and GDP growth to get a fair figure for their market growth. But, no matter how you configure this, they now have well over 80 per cent of the market. That means they can charge whatever they please. That is why all those items carry a 300 per cent mark-up. In retailing we have very high mark-ups. My family were in retailing but we could not dream of a mark-up of 300 per cent. There is a terrible name for that—and everybody here knows what the name for a 300 per cent mark-up is.

Why are they doing it? Because they can do it. It is because, unlike in any other country on earth, they have 80 per cent of the marketplace. We ask the government: when will this situation be assailed?

Every four days a farmer in this country commits suicide. Isn’t that something for us to be proud of as a race of people!

Last time I did the figures, I found that in nine years time this country will become a net importer of food. That prediction varies up and down. There is another set of figures that would indicate it will be in 26 years. But, whichever way you configure it, this country will not be able to feed itself in the near future. That is simply because the farmers are getting no money.

Let me return to Mr Samuel and his comments. Further on in this report, he says that ‘the ACCC finds that the increase in domestic fertiliser prices’—the ACCC have done a separate inquiry into fertiliser—‘reflects international prices’. This is a most extraordinary statement, as it is indicated in the ACCC’s own report that there is DAP, or diammonium phosphate, which is a phosphatic fertiliser, and urea, which is a nitrogenous fertiliser. The usage in Australia is divided about fifty-fifty. Mr Samuel’s comment would be fair if he was referring to DAP, but he takes both DAP and urea into account. In 2005 we were getting nearly $400 a tonne for urea—that was the world price—and the price today is still around $400 a tonne. Since 2005, the international price for urea has stayed at around $400 a tonne. But, according to Mr Samuel’s own reports, it has gone to $800 a tonne in Australia. Mr Samuel said the domestic prices have moved in sympathy with the international prices. But his own graph in his own report makes a lie of his statements. Either he did not read this document or he is deceiving the people of Australia and once again speaking on behalf of the corporate interest.

The poor farmers are being ripped off by a similar situation in the fertiliser industry, because there are only two people from whom you can buy fertiliser in Australia. Governments on both sides have told people like me and the honourable member for New England that the National Competition Policy was going to be a good thing for us. I do not know where it has been a good thing for us. It certainly has not been good for us in mining with no infrastructure and it certainly has not been good for us in the area of farming. Where the hell has it been an advantage for us?

The people’s watchdog, the ACCC, does not bark; it is a watchdog that bites not the burglar but its master—or its supposed master—the Australian people.

It has been going on and on and on. The farmers out there are committing suicide. The great songwriter Graeme Connors can write a song about the politicians and the bankers looking up at the glow in the sky as we burn ourselves in our cane fields. We have had three cases where people have effectively just walked out into the cane field and put a fire around themselves and incinerated themselves to death. That is what is happening in our country. Why? Because we have allowed monopolists to take control of the economy of Australia and we have done nothing about it.

Up on Mount Rushmore there is a very famous man called Teddy Roosevelt. Do you know why he is up on Mount Rushmore? Because he confronted Rockefeller. He showed guts. We talked about spine before. He was a man with the backbone to stand up for what is right. But the only person the ACCC stands on is an Australian BHP, which has been doing a good job for this country—and a good job that needed to be done. This malodorous smell in the nostrils of every decent Australian has to be removed! (Time expired)

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