Wheat Board Warns On Reforms
The Age
Tuesday March 3, 1992
The Australian Wheat Board has warned growers and the Federal Government that the pace of port and rail reforms may slow if it loses its status as Australia's only wheat exporter.
At a press briefing yesterday to counter a campaign by foreign grain traders to end its export monopoly, the board said it had used its unique status as a Government body and monopoly seller to force reforms for growers.
Its national operations manager, Mr Tom Pile, said the board muscled its way in on negotiations about waterfront reform to insist on faster change and a speedy reduction in growers' costs.
``Remarkable things have been achieved," Mr Pile said. ``Manning levels have been reduced by 70 per cent. Stevedoring charges have come down 50 per cent. And that came about because we took responsibility to ensure benefits for growers." Whereas 30 per cent of workers' time in some ports had been idle even when there were ships to load, Mr Pile said, their lunch, smoko, start and knock-off times were now coordinated to minimise disruption. In Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, ships are loaded without a break, and Victoria and Western Australia are slowly following.
While wheat ships formerly averaged four-and-a-half days in port, they were now loaded and gone within two days, Mr Pile said. The savings to growers already were worth $10 million to $15million a year, or $1 a tonne of wheat.
Mr Pile said the board had used its freedom from state laws to force the Victorian railways to slash grain freight charges by 16.5 per cent. In the 12 years to 1991-92, real freight and handling charges for wheat had fallen by almost a third.
Other Wheat Board executives warned that a change in its role might jeopardise the quality of Australia's wheat exports, the board's ability to pay growers within 21 days of delivery, its marketing effort in difficult countries, and the industry's cost of funds.
Eight multinational grain exporters have challenged the board's monopoly, forming a body called the Australian Grain Exporters Association, with the board's former marketing chief, Mr Bob McCarthy, as its chief executive.
But the managing director of the board, Mr Jim Lawrenson, yesterday challenged the group's credentials. ``There's nothing Australian about any of them," he said. While the board was really a wheatgrowers' cooperative, distributing all its profits to growers, its would-be rivals were foreign grain trading companies with loyalties only to their shareholders.
Mr Lawrenson said that last week Taiwan signed a contract for Australian wheat after a seven-year campaign by the board to enter its lucrative market. Foreign grain companies would not have bothered putting in that effort on behalf of Australian growers, he said, but would simply have shipped wheat from other sources.
The board's marketing manager, Mr Ron Storey, said Australia's wheat already enjoyed a premium for quality on world markets.
© 1992 The Age