The Hon. Beverley McArthur, Member for Western Victoria, Media Release, 17 May 2023
Labor’s Federal and Victorian Governments continue to prove they have no idea about Australia’s farmers – the country people who feed and clothe the nation.
In last week’s Federal Budget, the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, announced a new levy on farmers to help raise an extra $1 billion over four years to help overhaul the nation’s biosecurity protections.
The levy is effectively another tax.
Member for Western Victoria, Bev McArthur, said the levy is absurd, because Australian farmers are paying for the costs of international products coming into Australia.
“We might understand it if this tax was related to what Australian farmers do,” Mrs McArthur said.
“But this tax has got nothing to do with Australian, or Victorian farmers, and everything to do with their competitors.
“It’s like asking parents to pay someone else’s school fees. It’s nonsensical,” Mrs McArthur said.
The Federal levy will impose $153 million of costs on domestic producers.
“Australian farmers are not the ones posing the incoming biosecurity threat, so why are they the ones specifically paying for it when every Australian gets the benefits of good biosecurity?”
Mrs McArthur has raised the issue in the Victorian Parliament, identifying a better way to proceed.
“The independent Craik biosecurity review proposed an importer container levy,” she said.
Mrs McArthur questioned the Victorian Minister for Agriculture, Gayle Tierney, regarding what efforts she has made on behalf of Victorian producers to offer a better solution.
“I can hardly imagine the Victorian Minister would want her farmers slugged with another tax.
“My question to her is what representations has she made to her Labor colleagues in Canberra to propose an alternative to this unfair new farmer tax?” Mrs McArthur asked.
Mrs McArthur said already Victorian farmers are struggling with surging port and input costs.
“The rise and rise of doing business as a farmer in Victoria is not-acceptable.
“Labor keeps proving it has no idea about how things work in the real world – in regional Victoria.
“They don’t understand farmers, the country or the impact of more and more taxes and inflation on the people who do the big lifting in this nation.
“Shame.”
