Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan is chairing the Senate Select Committee on Agriculture and Related Industries. The Senate committee is enquiring into the markup between farm gate and shop shelf, fertiliser prices etc; and the running of agribusiness Managed Investment Schemes, including the damage caused by the collapse of Timbercorp and Great Southern.
Bill’s a Riverina bloke – he grew up on a family farm at Junee. And a spade is a shovel. This is the kind of no-bull approach needed for a genuine enquiry. One classic quote from Bill Heffernan’s website: ‘If I was Coles or Woolies I would source all my produce from MIS operators because it is widely known that they didn’t give a rats for the prices they got. Take strawberries for example. MIS just flooded the market and affected everyone else’s prices because they made their real money from fees, charges and commissions levied on investors.’ The gist of it seems to be that MIS schemes undercut long-term producers, made some businesses owned by genuine primary producers unviable, then the MIS schemes went broke (leaving substantial wreckage in their wake).
Bill also points out a very pertinent comparison – ‘in Canada the top retailers have 45 percent of the market while in Australia, Coles and Woollies have 80% of the market for packaged food. In Canada, five supermarkets have 60% of the packaged food market and in USA the top five retailers have 40% of the market.’