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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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Adjournment Debate

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN FARMERS FEDERATION

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (17:05): This week, we saw the end of the South Australian Farmers Federation, and I think the house ought to at least note the occasion with some comment. What has happened has happened, and hopefully we are going to see a rebirth of farmer representation.

For the last three or four years, sir, as you would know, farmers have not been adequately represented since they have been going through this tumultuous time of upheaval within the South Australian Farmers Federation. It is sad, because there has been a long history of strong farmer representation in South Australia, from the old Wheat and Wool Growers, then United Farmers and Stockowners (UF&S), and then by the South Australian Farmers Federation over many years.

We have now come to a point in time where they have restructured their representation through past premier Rob Kerin, and we now see the new body, Primary Producers of South Australia, which is entirely different to what we used to have. This is only a small body of around seven people, six of whom are individually representing various commodity groups: grain, livestock, dairy, horticulture, winegrape and pork producers.

Each group has a representative on the central body, and it is headed by an independent chair. At the moment, the interim independent chair is, of course, the Hon. Rob Kerin, and I think he is a very suitable choice. Mr Kerin guided the old South Australian Farmers Federation through this process, and we now see this body.

It was strongly supported at a meeting last Monday, with 70 votes to one, in support. There were two, but one wasn't financial. So it was 70 to 1. It was not me; I was financial. I did support it, but I have to say, on the record, that I have some reservations—I really do.

Over the years—and some of you would have been there—at the annual general meeting of the South Australian Farmers Federation, we used to have 100 to 120 people attending, and there would have been a row of MPs sitting in the front row. That has not happened for four or five years, and that has been the demise of the farmers federation. They tried to shrink it down; they tried to exclude the membership.

Of course, the big issue was when the grain section got involved with this single-desk issue, and this house was involved with that too. Can I say that the member for MacKillop can hold his head high, because he was one of only five MPs in this place who stood the line. It is sad to think that this whole thing started on this issue alone. It was when you decided to tell the farmers that they were not allowed to market together, that you were going to deregulate the process and allow the traders to take control of the market.

Well, when people say to me, 'Farmers left SAFF,' that is wrong: SAFF left the farmers. They did. Eighty per cent of the farmers were opposed to what they did, particularly the old grain section. Membership just crashed overnight. It went from around 7,000 members back to less than 1,000 in a matter of a couple of years—myself included; my membership lapsed, and it was the same for both my brothers.

It was a pretty sad day when this issue—I have no real beef about the problem of deregulation. Yes, I needed to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern age. Some of the younger MPs will tell me I am a troglodyte on some of these issues, or call me an agrarian socialist—yes, I am sometimes quite proud of that tag—but it should have been done differently. We probably needed to modify the way were doing things.

During the debate at the time (it is in Hansard and I can remember what the member for MacKillop said), we probably did need to change, but we were not going to have it shoved down our throats like that. I did lobby every member in this place, and I lobbied the upper house and had it delayed. A cartoon in the local stock journal had a crack at me: Ivan the Great holding up this monstrous ball called deregulation. It is up on the wall in my office, and very proud of it I am, too.

It happened that this issue of the single desk really was the cause of the demise of the South Australian Farmers Federation. That is history now, we cannot unscramble this egg, it has happened. Every decision we have made in these issues has been wrong—from the very first issue of putting together the Australian Barley Board with SACBH to form AusBulk, and then ABB Limited—

The Hon. L.R. Breuer: A couple of other people want to talk.

Mr VENNING: Okay. I am very concerned that we now have a multinational company. Let's go back a little bit. We had South Australian Cooperative Bulk Handling, which was a large company owned by the growers who controlled and built all the silos and the grain ports, and we all got money out of that, and we controlled that. The other boards were marketing boards: ABB, marketing barley, and AWB, marketing wheat. It worked well, but we, like fools, decided to put together the ABB, a marketer, with SACBH, the handler—wrong move. We are now paying a huge price for that because the marketer actually controls the handling and the ports here in South Australia. It was a very dumb move. Yes, we all supported it.

AusBulk was formed, and that was taken over. We were mutualised, put in a public company, and it was taken over by Viterra, a Canadian company. I do not understand why we did not have an Australian company take it over. So, we had Viterra, the Canadian company, which was workable. My brother was a director on that company, going to Vancouver for board meetings. They closed down all the facilities here and all the offices in Adelaide, which is sad, too. Of course, along comes Glencore, one of the biggest companies in the world, and now owns the whole process. That is what happened, that is all history, finished.

We now have this new organisation, Primary Producers South Australia. I am concerned that not enough people are involved at this level who will carry the day. If you have a problem with some of the decisions that have been made, you have to work through your grower commodity group, and we have many grower commodity groups anyway. The meeting we had last Monday will be the last one we have like that, where a group of people can come together and actually ask questions of the body corporate, so to speak, because they are number one in that.

Finally, I just want to say that I wish Primary Producers SA all the best, and I hope it works well for the sake of the farmers, and I also wish Grain Producers SA, which is the grain section of that, all the best as well. All I can say is that I am pleased that none of those people who caused all this angst are appearing on these bodies, nor should they, because some will be forever condemned, and I have said that before. I think we have to be positive. I am prepared to try to make this work and let bygones be bygones, but I just wanted to put the record straight on where we have come from.

I want to pay tribute to Peter White, who took a fair bit of flack in this place and held the line as the last full-time chairman of SAFF, and to Roger Farley, who was the interim chairman and has basically handed those reigns over. History will show that we have taken a pretty rocky path over all this. Let's hope now that with the new Primary Producers SA we can see a return to strong rural representation in South Australia—I will be there to make sure I do all I can while I am still here and also afterwards—and no doubt the member for MacKillop and the other members on this side will be there to make sure it does.

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