Greens leader Richard Di Natale has taken aim at Coles and Woolworths for selling milk for $1 a litre and indicated he may support a milk floor price.
As the ABC reports, Di Natale’s comments come as the fallout from the decisions of the two big dairy producers, Fonterra and Murray Goulburn to cut farmgate milk prices continues.
Murray Goulburn cut its price from $5.65 to between $4.75-$5.00 kgMS, while Fonterra cut its price from $5.60 per kgMS to $5.00 per kgMS.
“We need to decide whether we set a floor on it, I think that’s one option that’s up for debate,” Senator Di Natale (pictured) said.
“But the point here is we cannot continue to have a sustainable dairy industry while Coles and Woolies are ripping off dairy farmers.”
As the Australian reports, independent senator Nick Xenophon also indicated more regulation may be necessary.
“It should never have come to this; $1-a-litre milk price is not sustainable; you are all collateral damage in a five-year war between Coles and Woolworths,” he told a rally of dairy farmers in Melbourne yesterday.
“If we have to have an emergency levy put on milk, so be it.”
On Tuesday Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce announced a half-billion-dollar assistance package including concessional loans to help struggling dairy farmers. However, yesterday he rejected the call for regulation.
“If you put in a floor price, if that’s the Greens policy, I can understand the empathy behind that, but what happens is you end up with massive stockpiles of a product that you can’t move and the thing ends up collapsing and that itself creates a crisis,” he told ABC.
Image: The Age