Let’s face it, Barnaby Joyce is a complete dill. Until recently, he was trying to take personal credit for the rising prices of some soft commodities. Just listen to him in Parliament – what a joke.
But if he can force the Turnbull government, which is basically a pack of wets, to agree to the re-regulation of the sugar industry, he will no doubt be urging the agrarian socialists and their sympathesizers to agree to the re-regulation of the dairy industry.
This is notwithstanding the fact that taxpayers and consumers have already forked out hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve the deregulation of the diary industry.
Joyce really is a fool if he thinks what has happened to the price of milk has anything to do with local processors or local retailers. The global price has been crashing, with faltering demand and massive increases in production in Europe as the quota and controls that limited milk production there have been lifted.
And let’s face it, we are a high-cost producer that is likely to lose out in the new global environment.
Unsurprisingly, New Zealand is already hurting too.
You really wonder where the economic reformers have gone, because there are very few hanging around the Turnbull government. (Maybe it is truth in advertising that he has dropped the Liberal Party bit.)
Here is the story:
Barnaby Joyce will pressure retailers and processors to increase milk prices, and has not ruled up a levy on consumers.
Murray Goulburn slashed raw milk prices in April from $5.60 to $4.75-$5 and struggle to meet it net profit forecast, while Fonterra cut prices from $5.60 to $5 a kilogram in early May.
Mr Joyce’s initial response to farmer outrage and questions about the legality of pricing arrangements over the cut was to suggest they ask the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate.
Now Mr Joyce said he had recommended the ACCC “further investigate” the issue. Mr Joyce also said the current price of milk was an “anathema” and he will get on the phone to processors and retailers to urge them to take action.
“I’ll get on the phone tomorrow and start talking to the processors and also the retailers.
“[It’s] an anathema, I think it’s incredibly wrong that water in a bottle is priced more than milk and I think we need to have a strong yarn to the retailers about that,” he told Channel Nine.
“[I will] basically ask them if they want to fix it that would be great if they don’t they ask the government to fix it which they always complain about but that’s an option that we can always keep up our sleeve,” he said.
Asked whether he would support a levy on shoppers, he said: “I’ll make sure we have a yarn to the retailers first before we suggest anything first”.
Mr Joyce outlined assistance for farmers including the farm household allowance, concessional loans, and rural financial counsellors.
“I can completely understand the grief they are going through,” he said.
Labor agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon has been slow to take action. He met with dairy farmers about the issue with Labor candidate for Sarah Henderson’s seat of Corangamite, Libby Coker, in Colac in western Victoria last week.