Imported food produce - Radio Comments - 22 December 2011

Robert Brokenshire, Family First MLC (5AA 9.24-9.29) Consumer trend to buy cheap imported fruit and vegetables


(Pantelis: … Rob Brokenshire … you must be just throwing your hands up in the air, I imagine at these figures)

A selection of South Australia's fine foods at the
Adelaide Central Market

… yes, from the point of view of Family First Legislative Council as also as a farmer I’m definitely throwing my hands up in the air because so far we have not won the argument with the Federal Government to actually look at the importance of food security for a start. Then from a State perspective, in the Riverland where there is need for some diversification … we have an excellent opportunity through Grow SA and other organisations to go back into quality market gardening in parts of the Riverland, but the inhibiting factor at the moment is that it’s not viable for them to necessarily do that when we’re getting this food dumped at a cheap price because it’s not accredited, it doesn’t have the quality control, and it’s nowhere the product that we can grow in our own nation

(Pantelis: Why aren’t people listening? Why isn’t the Federal Government worrying about the food security angle especially?)

… sadly at the moment I don’t think the Federal Government has got a focus on agriculture and it’s unfortunate that I say that. I say that because we’ve seen reductions in research and development, we’ve seen a number of Senators and people like myself from Family First in there appealing, Leon Byner running a Facebook on this. But the Federal Government are not focused on agriculture. They think we’re doing fine. They think it’s alright to have this free trade when it’s not fair trade. And of course the focus is generally on mining because that’s an easy one for Government. But also in defence of the Federal Government, on the reverse side, I had some of the most senior legal people in my office a few months ago because I simply wanted to get a brand on pears and apples coming into South Australia, that simply said Produce of New Zealand, Product of Queensland, New South Wales, whatever, and they told me I would not be able to have that legislation passed in South Australia and even if I got it passed the Commonwealth would have to move to have it overturned. And even if the Commonwealth Government, would you believe supported it, because of the agreement that’s been.. the free trade agreement between New Zealand and Australia and the way that agreement was drafted, and the WTO, they would challenge it and it would be overturned for the reason that that contract is so flexible of that agreement for New Zealand. And that’s how come … we’re getting this back door approach of particularly frozen vegetables coming from China. I can tell your listeners I’ve been up to Adelaide Mushrooms, a massive state of the art mushroom production plant near Murray Bridge, it produces the best mushrooms you could get in the world, and yet they’ve got to compete with inferior mushrooms that I’ve seen filmed being grown almost in a sewerage pit … in China, and they’re bringing them over here and yet the accreditation that Adelaide Mushrooms … have to go through is second to none. This is the dilemma … and look, we must not give up the fight. A number of us must continue that fight and we appreciate the help we get from media …

 (Pantelis: Are we likely to see a poisoning epidemic from imported food? We’ve had it in dog food imported from China, for instance … is it going to take something like that before the Federal Government … sits up and listens?)

Family First strongly supports Australian food security;
Rob Brokenshire is a Mount Compass dairy farmer
(Photo courtesy of the Sunday Mail)

 … I hope that it doesn’t take something like that because that would be absolutely tragic, particularly when many of us have been ringing the alarm bells for so long. But it may be like that. Unfortunately it may be like a situation where until there’s a fatality on our roads we don’t get safety rails put up. But we should be going harder than that. Also from the point of view of our jobs and our own food security, there becomes a tip-over point. Look at what has happened with Edgell’s in the eastern states moving out with beetroot production now being done in New Zealand etc. If we get too much import then we lose our viability, we lose or flexibility between our domestic market in Australia and our export opportunities, and then there’s almost an implosion and you see more export coming in. We just can’t afford that because as those countries do improve eventually, and as they get hungrier, remembering we’ve got to double food production in this world in the next 40 years to even hope to cope with feeding the world, where is Australia’s food security? And from that point of view I think the Federal Government through the Prime Minister have got to take this internationally and argue for a fairer playing field and at least proper labelling laws

 (Pantelis: Rob, thanks for your time.)

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