Mr ZAHRA (9:51 AM) —I have met with several groups of dairy farmers in my electoral district about some serious issues which their industry is confronting over the milk price. At the moment, at the farm gate the milk price is around 24c a litre. If you, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, and I go down to the supermarket we pay about $1.60 a litre. There is a massive disparity, probably one of the largest in Australian industry, between what consumers are paying for milk per litre and what farmers are getting paid for it. This creates an enormous problem for the dairy industry. The different groups of dairy farmers that I have been speaking to on this issue are telling me that it is putting their future plans for their farms at risk. They have no certainty in relation to the milk price that they might get next year or the year after. This makes it very hard for them to plan their investments, improve productivity on their farms and take out loans with some certainty of being able to meet the repayments.

I say to the parliament today that these people I have met with in the industry are right: there is something crook in the dairy industry. There is something very wrong when we have a situation in this country where dairy farmers are only able to choose between four or five different dairy companies, who all offer them almost exactly the same price. If you go to Murray Goulburn, the milk price is 24c. If you go to Burra Foods, it is 24c. If you go to United Dairy Power, it is 24c. If you go to Pauls, it is 24c. There is something crook in the dairy industry when people are charging more than $1.60 per litre of milk and ordinary farmers—who are the ones who work hard in their daily lives, who make the investment and who take the risk—are only getting 24c a litre.

If we want to be serious about this industry, we have to give these people some certainty and we have to recognise how hard their work is. We must recognise that we need to put in place a principle of reward for effort in the dairy industry, like we do in all other industries. People are producing substantially more milk this year than they did last year and getting paid substantially less. This is an appalling market signal. There is something crook in the dairy industry and we need to take it seriously in the federal parliament. The call from this group of farmers and other groups of farmers around the country for a proper inquiry into what is going on in the dairy industry, addressing some of these market power issues, is appropriate. I support their call for this inquiry. We should have a proper inquiry, instigated by the Commonwealth parliament, to address this serious issue.