DEPUTY prime minister Barnaby Joyce is being urged to release a Productivity Commission report into sugar marketing when he is in Brisbane today.
Agriculture Minister Bill Byrne said report was presented to the Australian government on November 15.
“Mr Joyce has great opportunity to clarify what the Turnbull Government intended to do to clean-up the mess caused by the LNP’s meddling in sugar marketing,” Mr Byrne said.
“Cane growers and millers in Queensland need to know what the Productivity Commission report proposes and what the Coalition will do to drag the industry out of the mire.
“It is a year since the Queensland parliament passed sugar marketing legislation with LNP amendments against the wishes of the Palaszczuk Government.
Mr Byrne said the Sugar Industry (Real Choice in Marketing) Amendment Act brought into law by the LNP and Katter party had failed.
CLICK HERE to read LNP deputy leader Deb Freckington’s defence of the laws.
“The industry is in a crisis manufactured by knee-jerk meddling by the LNP,” Mr Byrne said.
“We know that the Productivity Commission’s interim report about the Sugar Marketing Act was damning. It called for the amendments we opposed to be repealed.”
Mr Byrne said said the Liberals and Nationals were at war over sugar.
“Before the legislation passed the Queensland Parliament Foreign Minister Julie Bishop wrote to the Queensland government warning re-regulation would be damaging to Australia’s interests and put future overseas investment in our agricultural industry at risk,” he said.
Mr Byrne said the Palaszczuk Government’s position before the legislation passed was that contracts between millers and growers should have been resolved by industry through normal commercial means.
“Our position today has not changed,” he said. “It is in the interests of everyone in the Queensland sugar industry to release the report now.”
