Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, , 6:46:02 to 6:49:04
Inquiry into the mechanisms for setting and reconsidering R&D levies in the grains industry, involving representative organizations like GPA and Grain Growers Limited.
Topics: Agricultural research and levies, Agricultural productivity
Speakers: Speaker 13, Speaker 12, Speaker 27
Broman, >> thank you. Just might take long at all. Just going back to the um the R&D levies. >> Yep. >> Yep. Got the right people. Yeah. >> Um so my back of the envelope calculation based on last year's um tons from WA, another record crop in Western Australia, um is that the GDC levy, which was sitting around a billion dollars, um would currently be in the order of between 1.2 and 1.3 after the last harvest. Do you have up-to-ate
figures on that? Uh, not with us, Senator, but we'll be able to get those.
>> Yep. >> Right. So, >> am I in the ballpark? >> 24 25. >> Am I in the ballpark?
>> Off the top of my head, I I wouldn't want to take a stab.
>> All right. Let's just say it's in excess of a billion dollars. I mean, this is a a significant reserve. And whilst normally I would be in a position where saying you know an industry body having significant reserves is a good thing at some point it actually starts to punish the industry it is a part of what is the mechanism in the grains industry of reconsidering that levy sorry where that levy is set not its
existence where it's set. >> Sure. So the the the mechanism is uh effectively that um in the hands as my colleague spoke to previously in relation to wine very similar um for grains where the representative organizations in in relation to GDC there's two there's um grain producers Australia and grain growers limited um and effectively um through those representative organizations um need to um engage with their with their levy payers um and then I guess come back with a proposal to government about um where the levy should be set and then the
minister would consider that. >> Is there any other industry um of scale and grains industry is you know right up there with agricultural industries in terms of being the biggest. Um is there any other industries with two uh responsible entity responsible organizations? Responsible entities
>> uh representative organizations >> representative organizations >> write letters
>> are representative organiza. Is there any other major industry with multiple representative organizations? >> Uh testing me I think cattle does. Yeah. >> Okay. So do they have uh for example in the wool industry there's the regular wool pole >> which happens every four years from memory >> uh three years >> every years senator >> three years four years >> three years >> so is that baked into the legislation is that a decision from that particular representative organization because we