LABOR MUST STOP DEVOURING AUSTRALIA’S FOOD INDUSTRY
02-November-2011
Labor has today been delivered a chilling warning by the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC): alter course on industry and regulatory policy or risk decimating the country’s largest manufacturing sector.
Amid a range of ominous trends and forecasts, the AFGC’s 2020: Industry at a Crossroads publication shows the industry is facing a ‘perfect storm’ of cost and regulatory pressures.
These include:
• the likely loss of up to 130,000 jobs (and a further 6,000 jobs in associated sectors like agriculture) by 2020; and
• a slump in operating profits by between 4.4% and 11.6% purely because of the introduction of the Government’s economy-destroying carbon tax.
“The Council’s report confirms what the Coalition has repeatedly warned – that the multiple current pressures on manufacturers are now pushing Australian industry toward a breaking point,” said Shadow Industry Minister Sophie Mirabella.
“With over half of our food and grocery processors now negative about their futures, it has also laid down an unequivocal challenge to Industry Minister Kim Carr to finally start listening to Australian businesses, and abandon his fascination with putting roadblocks and regulations in their way.
“Mr Carr has belligerently dismantled successful policies and programs, gutted R&D and commercialisation incentives, increased red tape and complex environmental reporting, ploughed on with implementing a carbon tax without releasing any modelling or seriously listening to industry’s concerns, and created crushing disincentives to investment and growth in our economy.
“Unlike Labor, the Coalition will scrap toxic, go-it-alone taxes; work with the sector to encourage investment in R&D; address the real costs of regulation to Australian industry; and deliver a more robust anti-dumping regime that recognises the impact on our domestic market of dumped foreign products.”