Media Release

KAP leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has thrown his support behind a dairy farmers’ petition that asks supermarkets to increase the price of milk by 10 cents per litre and that processors guarantee the full amount will go directly back to the farmer. 

Mr Katter has long advocated for a better deal for the dairy industry that suffered catastrophic economic and social consequences after deregulation and now faces skyrocketing fodder costs during the drought.

Mr Katter said, “On one tour, at the seven dairies that I visited there were no employees because each dairy was run by a husband and wife team - they got up and started milking at 5 o’clock in the morning and finished milking at 7 o’clock at night. 

“They would be the hardest working people because they’ve got to do that every single day. You cannot leave a dairy cow with milk because it will become diseased very quickly unless the milk sac is emptied each day. 

“The week the dairy deregulation was introduced in Queensland, the price to the farmer plummeted from 59 cents per litre to 41 cents per litre.” 

Mr Katter is calling for more action to help the industry and reckons the extra 10 cents per litre petition is just the beginning. 

“Declare that stage 1 - stage 1 we go to 10 cents a litre at the farm gate. There also needs to be a return to orderly marketing by the re-creation of marketing boards providing a legal property right called a milk quota which can be bought and sold within delineated geographic areas. And for this fresh milk, the marketing board establishes a price to be paid to the milk producer and the ownership of that fresh milk quota be confined to Australian citizens.” 

Mr Katter remains completely bamboozled by the corporatised supply chain that sees milk travel halfway across the country rather than stay in the local area.

“The situation that often and mostly prevails is that one of the supermarket giants contracts South-East Queensland (SE Qld) milk whilst another contracts North Queensland (Nth Qld) milk. The extraordinary and unacceptable current outcomes where the million people that live in Nth Qld watch the dairy tankers from Atherton go south to SE Qld and come back empty. The height of absurdity for those worried about CO2; a very negative outcome indeed. 

“In addition to this is the concept of a free market, when there are only two people buying and selling milk (the two giant supermarket chains), this is Government deceit on a massive scale and clearly the oligopoly can pay whatever they feel like.” 

—ENDS—