January 29, 2020
The Queensland Dairyfarmers Organisation says a proposed new national body for the dairy industry has overlooked “the most important stakeholders”, ie. individual dairy farmers.
The Joint Transition Team released its recommendations for the future of the Australian dairy industry on Wednesday.
QDO president Brian Tessmann said the proposed national body – referred to as “NewCo B” in the recommendations – “misses the mark”.
“The whole reason, the Australian Dairy Plan became necessary was because of the discontent dairy farmers had for the existing structures,” Mr Tessmann said.
“Why? Because their specific needs weren’t being met and their concerns weren’t being addressed.
“A skills-based board cannot achieve this and has failed the industry massively in the past.
“Dairy farmers are paying a compulsory levy to Dairy Australia but were not receiving the benefits that such a levy should have provided. A representative board democratically elected by levy paying members is essential if it is to represent their interests.
“Money received by any organisation regardless of its structure needs to benefit the actual farmers paying the levy, not feed a national organisation that repeats the same mistakes of now.
“We fully support the recommendation for a single ‘one-stop-shop for policy, advocacy, R&D and marketing’.
“What we don’t agree with is the removal of regionally based organisations.
“Farmers and State dairy organisations have been putting pressure on the national bodies by scrutinising and often publicly criticising their performance.
“We’ve often had to go it alone when it comes to forcing change, as was the case with ending $1/litre milk nationally.
“Today’s recommendation is a means to silence that criticism.
“To be clear, this is not about QDO trying to hold on to its own position. We already see the value of merging with NSW since our regional interests are very similar and we have done a lot in this space to make this happen.
“Our discontent comes from the fact that the structure proposed for ‘NewCo B’ does not focus on providing accountability back to farmers.
“It doesn’t address the fact that the dairying regions have different and specific issues which have consistently been ignored at a national level.
“The regional consultations undertaken as part of the Dairy Plan process made all of this abundantly clear.
“So, while we thank the JTT for its work to date, we firmly believe that the state body organisations forcibly kept out of the Dairy Plan along with ADF need to take the reins and steer the focus back towards the needs of the farmers.”
