Media Release

KAP Federal Leader and Member for Kennedy Bob Katter will tomorrow (Thursday) join Senate candidate and Australian singer James Blundell and Test cricketer Carl Rackemann for a great Australian breakfast of baked beans as part of a people-powered campaign to protect our food production industries against the might of the most concentrated supermarket retail sector in the world.

The “100 All-Aussie Breakfast” in Kingaroy, Queensland, will celebrate the sourcing of local navy beans as part of the national “Toss a Tin in Your Trolley” grassroots campaign, which appeals to consumers to help save Australia’s processor, SPC Ardmona from closing its doors to cannery workers and growers in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley fruit bowl.

The event follows Tuesday’s public hearing in Canberra as part of an inquiry into emergency tariffs on tinned fruit imports.

Mr Katter pointed to the campaign’s potential given the success of a similar people-powered push to save iconic South Australian processor Spring Gully.
Mr Katter blamed successive governments’ free market policies for facilitating a flood of cheap imports favoured by supermarket giants to fill their shelves with cheap generic labels for fatter profit margins.

“Free trade is a ‘free kick’ for our foreigner competitors and a ‘kick in the head for Australians,” said Mr Katter.

“It seems 85 per cent of plastic bagged and canned foods in the supermarkets all seem to come from offshore.

“Right now our farmers are walking off the land and our food processors are closing their doors, so we’re looking at a future in which we will see Australia in several years time become a net importer of food, a nation unable to feed itself.
“And it will be the Australian consumer who pays the ultimate price after all the competition is squeezed out, and then the big giants charge us what they like for all this cheap overseas produce – and for fuel, liquor, hardware, etc, the list goes on and on.

“We have moved laws in this Parliament:

1. to restrict supermarket giants’ market share;
2. to restrict foreign ownership of Australian agribusiness and land;
3.  to label all foreign produce warning that the item is an import not necessarily grown to Australian health and hygiene standards;
4. to allow dairy farmers to access an arbitration commission for a fair price for milk;
5. to legislate in a sales docket between horticulture producers and merchants; and
6. for the Parliament to endorse the emergency tariffs as permitted by the World Trade Organization on cheap foreign imports that are threatening the viability of food producers such as SPC Ardmona, Simplot (Birds Eye) and McCain.

“There has also been relentless moral persuasion to force the AUD down to its free float level, which was below 60 cents. This will double the price of imports. These were Australian policies for a hundred years”.

For more details on the “Toss a Tin in Your Trolley” online campaign, visit tinyurl.com/methkr7