Katter’s Australian Party MP Shane Knuth has tabled a private members bill into the Queensland Parliament to legislate for the introduction of fair milk price ‘logos’.
The aim is for voluntary region-specific logos to be placed on milk containers, giving consumers confidence the dairy farmer who produced that milk received a fair price.
As production costs vary across Queensland, the Bill identifies three dairy regions – north Queensland, central Queensland and south-east Queensland.
“This will make it very simple for the consumer – they can walk into the shop and immediately see which fresh milk produced in which region is fairly priced by looking for the logo,” Knuth (pictured) said in a statement.
The Bill provides for the setting of a minimum price to be paid to dairy farmers for the production of milk carrying a logo, which is a voluntary market mechanism processors can choose to incorporate into existing milk labels.
The legislation establishes the eligibility criteria and legal protection for logos and introduces offences for particular conduct to protect the logo integrity.
However, producers and processors would not be penalised if they chose to not adopt the logo.
Knuth stressed that the Bill did not enable regulation of the Queensland dairy industry.
As the ABC reports, both the Government and the Opposition indicated they have not yet decided if they will support the bill.
Both the Agriculture Minister Leanne Donaldson and the Opposition agriculture spokesman Dale Last will assess the merits of the bill after a parliamentary committee first assesses it.
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