GPA CONTINUES PUSH FOR LEVY VOTING SYSTEM

Grain Producers Australia (GPA)is continuing discussions with GrainGrowers following the Federal Agriculture Minister’s response to GPA’s levy proposal, including consideration of the scope, cost and structure of a future national grower consultation process.

GPA Research, Development and Extension Spokesperson Andrew Weidemann said discussions had focused on both the practical and legislative issues surrounding any future levy payer voting process.

“Once we had the confirmation from the Minister’s office we met with GrainGrowers to discuss the step forward and as a consequence of that we’ve been looking at the cost of doing the work and actually the scope of the work as well,” Mr Weidemann said.

“There's two parts to the process and that is to understand what the PIRD Act currently allows us to do and how it can be funded.

"The Government’s position at the moment is suggesting that we can’t use levy funds.

“We’ve asked for non-matched levy funds to be used to utilise the levy payer database and then also go around and talk to growers around Australia.”

Mr Weidemann said GPA’s levy review work had already involved extensive grower engagement over several years.

“We started our levy review process back in 2022 and we’ve been working through that and then obviously that culminated last year with the independent levy review process that we undertook,” he said.

“We did webinars with growers, we did seminars, at the same time GrainGrowers was out talking to growers directly on the ground, so there was plenty of correspondence that growers would have known there was something going on in this space.

“The levy response that we received from the process managed independently by Australian Regional Insights showed 76 per cent of those that voted actually believed there needed to be a change in the levy rate.”

Mr Weidemann said GPA did not believe representative organisations should solely fund what was effectively a whole-of-industry consultation process.

“From the inception of the GRDC going right back, it’s always been a communication between the representative organisation and the Minister of the day where we would say to the Minister 'yes, we have been informed from the work we’re seeing with GRDC that the rate should stay as it is'," he said.

“Now that’s kind of got a bit muffled in the last decade to some degree and obviously now we’re looking at a situation where we’ve got the two ROs trying to work together to achieve and allow growers to have a vote.”

Mr Weidemann said the grains industry had already invested significant effort into establishing a levy payer database and voting framework.

“Back in 2014 a lot of listeners who have been on this journey for a long time would realise that we didn’t actually know who the levy payers were, so we developed a levy payer database which was instigated from my group and myself at the time,” he said.

“We’ve got a levy payer voting system set up, it’s not been used and we’ve now been asked as industry to foot the bill to actually use it now.”

Mr Weidemann said GPA believed further reform work was needed to ensure the levy consultation framework remained workable into the future.

“If the Minister and the PIRD Act don’t allow us to use it then that’s the next legislative change,” he said.

“You’re setting this up not just for one vote but you’re setting it up in perpetuity essentially.

“Ultimately you can’t ask a subsidisation from a member organisation to pay for what should really be paid for by the levy payers themselves.”

Mr Weidemann said GPA believed the current statutory arrangements no longer reflected the way the grains industry now operated.

“All of the other RDCs that are industry-owned obviously use levy funds to run their own review processes and because we’re a statutory organisation we’re operating under a statutory arrangement and that’s the problem,” he said.

“The statutory arrangement is not fit for purpose today in the way that the industry’s moved.”