I simply could not believe what I was reading when I came to the article in today’s paper – 26 April – about what our local federal member, Llew O’Brien, had to say about the proposed Biosecurity Protection Levy.
Mr O’Brien has called this a “fresh food tax”.
The very idea that Australian farmers should be expected to pay a levy to cover the costs of biosecurity issues of those importing food into Australia is beyond insanity.
It is insulting.
It is a direct and unwarranted attack upon Australian farmers.
As Mr O’Brien has rightly pointed out, this levy will force Australian farmers to pay the costs of their international competitors.
How is this fair?
Since Australia became a signatory to the New International Economic Order during the mid-1990s, Australian farmers have been fighting a very unequal battle with cheaper foreign imports.
Crops that were once grown here began to be imported, in the name of some sort of “evening out” process.
The outworking of this here in Australia was the virtual collapse of many of our primary industries.
And this collapse was worsened by the imposition of de-regulation, which enabled supermarket chains, for example, to decide for themselves what they were going to pay the farmers who supplied them.
In many instances, these payments no longer even covered the farmers’ costs of production.
In our own region here, this meant that many dairy farmers had no choice but to walk off their farms.
It also meant that the hillsides out near Imbil which were once covered in pineapple fields are now bare.
For how much longer are surviving Australian farmers, Australian workers, and Australian families going to allow our governments, federal and state, to lead us into national suicide?
Thank you to our federal member, Llew O’Brien, for being prepared to stand up on this issue.
And thank you, ‘Gympie Today’, for reporting it.
– John Hermann
Gympie
