In 1975 we entered a cattle depression. It ended in 1978 but triggered the end of the old Meat Board and the start of the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation (AMLC).
This, in turn was disbanded by John Anderson in 1998 and replaced with a new, complicated structure.
The Red Meat Advisory Council (RMAC) was created to oversee the industry and advise the minister. It has no power, and has composed four strategic plans, which were never implemented.
Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) spent billions and oversaw an almost halving of domestic beef consumption, huge falls in beef and sheep numbers and of producers. Had RMAC's charter been devised by vegetarians, the body would be deemed a great success.
The Senate Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport's Inquiry of 2014 into the grass-fed levy, recommended RMAC's abolition, but no National Party minister will touch it.
That RMAC should be doing the current review of the red meat industry is an insult. It wants to address "climate change and licence to operate"- buzz words out of sheltered Green workshops. Its Green Paper has option two as "the law of the jungle" if RMAC (with no power at all) is removed. The authors miss the irony of the option's name.
Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" in 1906, highlighting the appalling conditions in the Chicago abattoirs. Polish immigrants were exploited in fearful fashion. The outrage saw government act.
Meat inspection came in, meat worker unions were born, and then, the Packers and Stockyard Act was legislated, which curtailed the Swift and Armour processing duopoly.
A century later, Australia has a processing duopoly which includes the descendant of Swift plus a supermarket duopoly. Producers pay huge money to MLA toward the two duopolies' marketing, yet have the lowest prices in real terms in our history. Now it is producers who are in "The Jungle" being eaten by predators.
RMAC should be abolished, the obscene $270 million MLA budget shredded and the organisation downsized to providing market reporting and beef grading to the consumer.
There should be a return to a lean staffed Meat Research Corporation.
Government should legislate a modernised US Packers and Stockyard Bill of 1921, and its subsequent amendments in compulsory market reporting.
Government should organise a four yearly referendum of all levy payers on what, if any, levy they will support. One vote for each levy payer.
The concept of a compulsory levy being placed in the hands of a producer body whether elected, appointed or press ganged is crazy. They would quickly develop the Canberra "club" mentality.
Administration of asylums by inmates has invariably been unsuccessful.
