February 6, 2007

 

South Australian wheat growers want export system freed
 

 

The grains council of lobby South Australian Farmers' Federation, or SAFF, late Monday called for a staged deregulation of export wheat marketing - the first of the major state farming organisations to do so.

 

"The SAFF Grains Council has resolved to support a phased in period of accreditation of multiple wheat exporters, leading to full deregulation," SAFF Grains Council Chairman Brett Roberts said in a statement.

 

The decision was taken at a meeting of the council Friday, where the group agreed to scrap its support for the existing arrangements based around an export monopoly, currently operated by AWB Ltd.

 

Roberts said the decision came after much deliberation about the impact on the wheat industry of the revelations in an inquiry about AWB's payment of US$221.7 million in kickbacks to the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein during the UN oil-for-food programme.

 

The inquiry, headed by former state judge Terence Cole, found AWB might have broken local criminal and corporate laws by making the payments and named 11 former AWB executives as possibly acting illegally. A police task force is considering the report.

 

This South Australian decision comes as a four-member committee appointed by the government to consult with wheat growers and the industry about their export wheat marketing needs undertakes a series of 25 public forums in wheat growing areas around the nation, including South Australia.

 

The government will use the panel's report, which it wants by Mar 30, to inform a decision they plan to make on future wheat export marketing arrangements.

 

At stake is control of an export trade that can run to almost A$5 billion a year, depending on local production.

 

SAFF's Roberts said the international reputation of Australia's wheat industry has been negatively impacted by the revelations in the Cole Inquiry.

 

"It just can't be business as usual - as if the Iraqi wheat scandal never happened," Roberts said.

 

SAFF Grains Council wants a staged approach to full deregulation to ensure that growers are ready for this eventuality, he said.

 

SAFF's aim is to secure international markets and achieve the best returns for South Australian wheat growers, he said.

 

Free wheat market lobby Western Wheatgrowers welcomed the South Australian decision, with Chairman Leon Bradley saying the move was not surprising.

 

Growers in South Australia and Western Australia are most affected by the export monopoly because most of their wheat is exported, he added.

 

Growers could see that they would be increasingly disadvantaged without substantial future change, Bradley said in a statement.

 

Growers in Australia's eastern states are less dependent on exports because they can sell wheat into a vibrant domestic market, which is not available to the same extent for South Australian and Western Australian growers.