Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

As I've mentioned, what we believe on this side is that we have strong competition to allow small businesses and farmers to get a fair return for the work they do. That includes making sure that larger businesses cannot act in a repetitive and strong anti-competitive way, so we have strong competition laws to do that. That's why we've referred these matters to the ACCC, it's why we're moving a mandatory code of conduct forward and it's also why we established the effects test under competition laws. It's also why the agriculture minister is open-minded to the suggestion of having a temporary levy to help dairy farmers. We have spoken to retailers about this. If retailers are supportive of a levy, and we're having constructive discussions, the Minister for Agriculture has indicated he would potentially take that forward to provide temporary relief to farmers. But the best thing we can do for farmers is have strong competition in the marketplace to provide them a good return over time.