David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to bring to the attention of this house a dilemma facing the dairy producers of this great nation. Just the other day, on the Comboyne plateau, I met with good friends and colleagues Rodney and Sue Fisher, only to hear that what has been threatened has come to be this year. He and Sue have ceased being dairy producers. They are among many who have exited, are considering exiting or are making plans to exit the dairy industry. The dilemma is that there has been a slow constriction of profitability over many years, based on the poor farm-gate prices that dairy producers face.

Why is this so? We have a market that is operating, but it's been an unfair market with distortions. There is undue power at the top end of the market that dominoes bad effects and bad decisions all the way down to the producer, who's got nowhere to go. What faced Rodney and Sue Fisher faces every dairy farmer: increasing costs for fuel—namely, grass—for water, whether it's irrigated or falling from the sky; fertilisers; machinery; diesel; electricity; labour; repairs and maintenance; and investment in genetics. The costs of all those things go up, but the price of milk relatively has been coming down. Eventually dairy producers realise there is no future.

We have been working very hard to correct this market imbalance through the development of a mandatory code of conduct that will apply to all dairy purchasing agreements, but we are in an emergency situation. We need a response now to keep dairy producers in the industry. Too many of them are leaving. That is why I propose a temporary 12-month levy. I'm writing and speaking to Woolies, Coles and ALDI, the big retailers that have huge market power and drive prices down, not just with dollar-a-litre milk but with the price that processors are getting, which has been squeezed. On the premium price they get for their branded milk, they've had their percentages shrunk over time, and they have to provide a discount price for unbranded milk, which has increased in volume, so they're being squeezed at both ends. Then that is transmitted down to the producers.

Whether you're on the Comboyne Plateau or in the Manning Valley, the Hastings Valley, the Lower Macleay or down into the Hunter and below, the same thing faces you all. (Time expired)