Food Agenda Plan Backed by Industry

The Coalition’s election pledge to form a working group to develop a National Food and Grocery Agenda – which industry has been calling for over the past two years – has been welcomed by the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) today (18 August 2010).

The Coalition plans to form a “new partnership with industry” to create a national strategy to enhance the food and grocery industry’s export capacity, improve food safety and strengthen consumer education about a healthy and balanced diet.

Food and grocery is Australia’s largest manufacturing sector worth more than $100 billion annually in turn-over and employs 315,000 people across Australia, including more than 150,000 in rural and regional Australia.  It’s four times larger than the automotive sector.

On top of this, Australian farms and their closely related sectors generate $137 billion-a-year in production – underpinning 12 per cent of GDP – and support more than 317,000 direct jobs on Australian farms with a flow-through of about 1.6 million jobs across the nation.

AFGC Chief Executive Kate Carnell applauded the Coalition’s move, saying it was essential to have a national food and grocery strategy to optimise Australia’s entire value chain from farm-gate to the consumer.

“Australia urgently needs a partnership approach involving relevant stakeholders and to plan and achieve a national food strategy to ensure Australia has a safe, affordable, nutritious and sustainable food supply into the future,” Ms Carnell said.  “All Australians want a robust local food production and processing sector – they don’t want to be increasingly reliant on imports from the Asia Pacific region for our food and grocery supply.”

Ms Carnell also applauded the Coalition’s commitment today to review Australia’s anti-dumping laws, which affect competitiveness and jobs in the nation’s food and grocery manufacturing sector.

“Industry welcomes the Coalition pledge to assess Australia’s anti-dumping scheme to ensure local manufacturers’ products aren’t undercut by imported, subsidised products,” Ms Carnell said.

In March this year, AFGC urged the Federal Government to reverse its decision to lift anti-dumping duties on discounted toilet paper imported from Indonesia and China, which could cause “significant harm” to industry and Australian jobs in SA and Victoria.  Ms Carnell said the removal of anti-dumping duties undermined the sustainability of Australian industry and ran counter to the Government’s sustainability agenda.

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