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Thursday, 13 October 2016 <strong>SENATE</strong> 111<br />
they introduced legislation to preserve the grower economic interests and to preserve arrangements where there<br />
was a choice in marketing.<br />
That a grower should be able to reduce who markets their sugar is a fairly novel idea to Wilmar Sugar. So that<br />
was very successful. The growers are happy and, in many instances, that legislation is working well—except for<br />
Wilmar, who remain completely obstructionist to the intent of the changes in the legislation and are refusing to<br />
engage with industry there to be able to move forward under the new laws and legislation.<br />
But dangerously, I say—and I am very conscious of using the word 'dangerously'—Wilmar have found another<br />
way that they think they can skin the cat. We have sugar terminal assets in my home state of Queensland. There<br />
are six bulk sugar terminals, located in Cairns, Mourilyan, Lucinda, Townsville, Mackay, and Bundaberg. These<br />
are very important assets to the local economies of those communities. The forefathers who set arrangements in<br />
place from the Queensland government handed those ports and assets over to STL, which is a Queensland<br />
company—Sugar Terminals Limited—and, importantly, they allowed two-thirds of the control of those terminals<br />
to be in the hands of growers and one-third to be in the hands of millers, recognising the importance of growers<br />
and that they must always have access to these terminals in a right, fair and equitable manner.<br />
So the terminals are leased to Queensland Sugar Limited under a leasing arrangement, and the board there has<br />
five positions. It currently has one fiercely independent and well-respected chairman of the board—who,<br />
interestingly, did not even come out of the sugar industry. This chairman, a very respected Queenslander, was<br />
brought on for their legal prowess and their knowledge and ability to bring good governance and independence to<br />
decisions that were in the interests of the sugar industry. Two of the other chairs belong to the growers, and two of<br />
the other chairs belong to millers. One of the miller chairs has now been held by Wilmar for some time, the other<br />
being held by a mill at Mackay which is a cooperative, a mill owned by growers. So, in effect, the 4,500 growers<br />
in the state had all their interests well preserved in the structure of this board.<br />
Now we have a position where Wilmar are contesting the second miller position on the board. They have now<br />
gone ahead and acquired over 50 per cent of the milling power in Queensland, therefore giving them the power to<br />
successfully displace a cooperative miller from the board and replace it with themselves. There is a clear strategy<br />
involved here. It is a very simple strategy, and that is that Wilmar is moving—contrary to their undertakings here<br />
when the Foreign Investment Review Board considered their initial application—to take full control of these<br />
national assets, these sugar terminal assets that were given to the industry on a two-thirds/one-third basis by the<br />
state government of Queensland.<br />
This is proof that we need to be very cautious about investment by foreign bodies whose interests are those of<br />
their shareholders, mostly non-Australian shareholders. Their interests are not our national interests. Their<br />
interests are not the interests of the 4,500 growers in Queensland. Their interests are across the world, and they are<br />
interested only in being a very profitable corporation. They are one of the biggest sugar millers in the world. They<br />
have processing capacity in Indonesia. There is great fear that, once they corner markets and control of the<br />
logistics at the ports, other millers will not be able to compete for berths, and we will have a travesty emerge in<br />
one of our very big, very important, very proud industries in my home state.<br />
So I say to Wilmar if you are watching—and it will not matter if you are not, because I am going to flick you a<br />
copy of the transcript tomorrow—that I will be watching very, very closely and I will gather momentum to take<br />
any measure to stop you disrupting our sugar industry in this state, where it is not in the interests of the growers.<br />
Peres, Mr Shimon<br />
Battle of Beersheba<br />
Senator FAWCETT (South Australia—Deputy Government Whip in the Senate) (19:10): In the short period I<br />
have available, I just want to remark on the opportunity that many of us here had here in Parliament House this<br />
week to sign the condolence book for Shimon Peres, twice Prime Minister and ninth President of Israel and a<br />
statesman who had a political career spanning nearly 70 years in that nation.<br />
It brought to my mind, in this year of the Centenary of Anzac, another centenary that we should be<br />
remembering. We tend to think frequently of Gallipoli and iconic places in Europe, but on 31 October next year<br />
we will be commemorating the 100th year since the charge of the 4th Light Horse at Beersheba, which is a<br />
significant event in Australia's military history. It brings back to us names like Allenby and Chauvel and some of<br />
the great achievements of our forefathers during that conflict.<br />
I was a little surprised last weekend to see in the Sunday Mail to see an article by a South Australian ABC<br />
journalist, Peter Goers, talking about the Australian soldiers memorial in Beersheba, which he said was not well<br />
regarded or looked after. I would have to say my experience, having been there myself, is that in fact Australia's<br />
contribution is very well regarded in Israel, and the memorial was very well cared for. I was speaking just recently<br />
CHAMBER