Australian agriculture enjoyed a win recently, with the Federal Government’s proposed biosecurity levy stalling in the Senate after several senators pulled their support for the idea.
I’d like to tell you these senators had an epiphany, suddenly realising what the government was proposing was not a levy, but a tax unfairly targeting the entire farming sector, but that wouldn’t be the full story.
In fact, many of these senators opposed the levy as a direct result of the nationwide Scrap the Tax campaign, coordinated by Australia’s peak agricultural body, the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF).
As a founding member of the NFF, CANEGROWERS played our part in this highly successful campaign.
It was a timely reminder that advocacy is a team sport, and like any team sport, you must rely on, work with, and trust in your teammates if you want to win.
CANEGROWERS has many such faithful working relationships, built over decades of advocacy on behalf of growers at local, state, national, and international levels.
At the local level, we regularly partner with productivity services, businesses, councils, and chambers of commerce, to tackle issues around planning laws, rates, and much more.
At the state level we engage with government directly, but also through our membership of the Queensland Farmers’ Federation, with whom we have long campaigned with on issues around water and electricity prices, workforce issues, government policy and legislation, etc.
This is similar to how we operate at the national level, where we work closely with NFF.
At international level, relationships like those we have fostered through our membership of the World Association of Beet and Cane Growers enabled us to combine successfully with Brazil and Guatemala to fight Indian price-distorting sugar subsidies at the World Trade Organization.
These relationships don’t come overnight, they take years to develop.
They are one of the core strengths of CANEGROWERS as an organisation, and something we will always strive to maintain.
But whether we’re working with our partners at state, national or international level, we are always working with a clear purpose in mind – to ensure the best possible outcomes for Queensland’s sugarcane growers and the communities they support.
