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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  14th of June 2008

Craig Isherwood, National Secretary
PO Box 376, COBURG, VIC, 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Single desk bill will kill family farms, people

At a time when Australia should be mobilising to expand food production, to save the 850 million people worldwide who are starving because of the global food shortage, the Government and Opposition are working together to pass a bill designed to annihilate family farms, let millions die, and give total control over the world’s export wheat trade to Cargill Inc. and other shadowy multinational food trading companies.

The bill before parliament will scrap the single marketing desk of the Australian Wheat Board, a mechanism that saved independent family farmers when it was first introduced in the 1930s and helped contribute to the development of Australia during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s as an industrialised, productive economy with a strong manufacturing and agricultural base.

By scrapping the single desk, the bill will remove what little price guarantee Australia’s wheat growers have, and leave them at the mercy of the international grain trading cartel, led by Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland, who have used free trade to destroy any government support for agricultural production and national food security.

A parallel assault on the single desk of the Canadian Wheat Board will, if successful, hand Cargill etc. control over the 65 per cent of the world’s wheat exports, which are currently managed by the CWB (50 per cent) and AWB (15 per cent) between them.

Tens of thousands of family farmers in both countries will be driven off the land (which will be taken over by agribusinesses and banks—the very interests who have conspired to destroy the AWB), and the productive capacity of world agriculture—already insufficient to feed 850 million people—will be even further reduced.

To save family farmers, guarantee our national food security, gear up production to address the world food shortage, and stop the hyperinflation in food costs at the supermarket, the Government must implement the CEC’s 9-point call published nationwide in newspaper advertisements on June 5, entitled “Australia must act now to address global food crisis”, including:

  • Immediate regulation of fertilizer prices, to bring costs down to January 2006 levels;
  • Regulation to slash fuel costs, by scrapping international parity pricing where the price at the bowser is based on the world price of $138 per barrel, and bringing the price down to reflect the actual cost per barrel, which BHP Billiton admitted on May 7 is just $5 per barrel;
  • A minimum floor price for harvests (which will be achieved through keeping the AWB’s single desk, and parity pricing policies);
  • An immediate moratorium on all farm foreclosures, (as provided for in the CEC’s Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill).

The CEC is working with the U.S. physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, who is leading the growing worldwide revolt against the British free trade system, and for a new Bretton Woods international monetary system, based on regulation, primary and secondary production, and infrastructure development.

Join the CEC to support this fight.


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