 |
| Ron Boswell |
Senator Ron Boswell, retiring from his
role next month after 31 years’ service to his beloved Queensland state , gave
a strong warning to Australian primary producers (and consumers who value them)
to work together, and with the Australian Government, to retain the influence
they should have – and deserve to have – over the way their industries
operate.
The Senator said: “What I want to do is
leave all Australian primary producers with a warning: take action now to
maintain control over the production and marketing of your product. Primary
producers are under threat from a long-term strategy by a powerful and
sophisticated combination of environmental zealots and major corporations that
would effectively control primary production practices worldwide.”
Stirred into action by his recent
knowledge of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, an organisation
created by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and dominated by non-producer bodies, Senator
Boswell stressed “I regard WWF and
other environmental activists teaming up with major corporations to impose
conditions on producers as a dangerous development.”
“Management of primary production is
being taken away from producers and from elected governments by environmental
non-government organisations. They are doing it via environmental conditions
enforced by corporations. This was encouraged during the six years of the
previous Labor Government. That government was in effect a Labor-Greens
alliance, and Labor surrendered to environmental lobbyists time and again. It
is time the Australian Government re-asserted its legitimate role in management
of primary production.”
“I regard WWF and other environmental activists
teaming up with major corporations to impose conditions on producers as the
“privatisation” of primary production. WWF and other environmental
activists are increasingly trying to dictate what can and can’t be caught,
harvested, grown or mined in Australia. WWF is an organisation with a turnover
in the hundreds of millions of dollars and 5000 staff spread across offices in
60 countries. It is a huge multinational business with enormous resources.
What’s more, it is handling the likes of roundtables and stewardship councils
on a daily basis.”
“By contrast, producers are often
developing responses on the run, responding as best they can to a
sophisticated, well-rehearsed strategy from WWF. Let’s not pretend that,
individually, any single commodity or industry representative body can handle
an organisation as powerful and sophisticated as WWF.”
“Producers have a fundamental knowledge
of how their operations should be conducted; Government has the scientists,
economists and resource managers to assist producers. Together, they can
guarantee sensible, rational, sustainable management of this nation’s natural
resources.”
Senator Boswell has long been seen as a defender
and promoter of Australian primary producers highlighted that they are under
threat. In the Senate he referred to Australia’s fisheries, being some of the
best managed and most sustainable in the world, but WWF has been signing them up
for expensive third-party certification schemes through its Marine Stewardship
Council (MSC) and WWF’s Forest Stewardship Council, designed to force forestry
companies into third-party certification which requires expensive assessments and
auditing, again paid for the producer.
Boswell told the Australian Government Upper
House “I have been
told time and again there will never be any certification scheme under the
Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Sustainability will be “verified”
somehow but not “certified”. Let me ask sensible cattle producers a simple
question: proof of sustainability requires expensive third-party auditing and
certificates in the WWF schemes for the forestry industry, for the fishing
industry, for the aquaculture industry and for the palm oil industry. Why would
it be any different for the cattle industry?”
“There
is a co-ordinated campaign by WWF and other NGOs to coerce industries into
certification schemes. They use a “good cop, bad cop” technique – where someone
like Greenpeace is the bad cop and WWF is the good cop. That behaviour has been
well documented.”
He
highlighted the plight of JBS, the world’s largest meat processor – with around
$40 billion a year in sales worldwide – which he says ‘was savagely attacked by
Greenpeace over the source of some of its cattle in Brazil. Have a look at a
Greenpeace report called “Slaughtering the Amazon” from 2009.
After another
attack in mid-2012 – claiming JBS was buying cattle from deforested regions in
the Amazon, a claim the company denied – JBS said it would take Greenpeace to
court for defamation. However, urged on by Greenpeace, the UK grocery chain Tesco cancelled its meat contract with JBS,
and five other European JBS supermarket customers threatened to do the same. The
IKEA furniture chain threatened to cancel its contracts for leather.”
Boswell
continued “JBS dropped its legal action against
Greenpeace, deciding it was easier to side with these environmental activists
than sue them, and is now also working with WWF on its Global Roundtable scheme
for beef.”
‘This
is a common story. For example, in 2008, Greenpeace protestors dressed in
orang-utan suits stormed Unilever’s headquarters in London and factories in
Rome and Rotterdam, protesting about the sources of palm oil. They climbed
buildings, occupied production lines and unfurled banners. It’s all familiar
Greenpeace tactics. However, Unilever quickly promised to use only verifiable
sustainable palm oil and has become one of the companies involved in the
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. And so it goes.”
At his resilient best the Senator said “This
is a dangerous development. Management of primary production is being taken away
from producers and from elected governments by environmental non-government
organisations. They are doing it via environmental conditions enforced by
corporations. It is time the Australian Government re-asserted its legitimate
role in management of primary production.”
“In 2012-13, minerals, oil
and gas contributed $75 billion to the economy of Queensland alone, some 26% of
the State’s gross domestic product, of which coal contributed more than half. These
resources were responsible for more than 430,000 jobs in Queensland, in fact
almost one in five jobs in the State. Mining is a very important industry to
Queensland.”
“WWF has launched a
campaign directly opposing development of port facilities that will allow coal
and other minerals to be exported efficiently. Its current “Fight for the Reef”
campaign is the usual WWF anti-development, anti-jobs campaign, with wildly
exaggerated claims about dangers to the Great Barrier Reef. This is another
example too of WWF enlisting corporate organisations to get involved. Unilever*,
which is the world’s largest ice cream manufacturer – with a turnover of $7
billion a year worldwide – has run a campaign through its Ben and Jerry’s ice
cream brand that directly supports the WWF Barrier Reef campaign. If this
campaign was successful, it would severely restrict the ability of the
Queensland and Australian Governments to generate vital earnings from coal and
other minerals.”
“WWF is hardly subtle or secretive about its
strategy. It is spelt out on WWF’s own website. It says
that, rather than trying to educate 7 billion consumers or improve the
practices of 1.5 billion producers, the most efficient way to effect change is
to work with the world’s largest companies.”
“Internationally, WWF has identified about 100
businesses that together buy and sell 25 per cent of the commodities with the
greatest impact on WWF’s priority products.
They estimate this de
mand can shift 40 to 50 per cent of global
production, and so those are the companies they are targeting. But, as WWF says, these are
not the producers but the middle-men. They are the companies that take the
product from the producer to the consumer, like McDonald’s and Unilever. Beyond
this, it also targets banks and other financiers of major projects.”
“WWF says it targets these
businesses “to change the way global commodities are produced, processed,
consumed and financed worldwide”. By contrast, producers are often developing
responses on the run, responding as best they can to a sophisticated, well-rehearsed
strategy from WWF.”
“Producers have a
fundamental knowledge of how their operations should be conducted. Government
has the scientists, economists and resource managers to assist producers.
Together, they can guarantee sensible, rational, sustainable management of this
nation’s natural resources.”
*Note – There is a track
record between Unilever and WWF as they were the original partners in MSC.
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
No comments:
Post a Comment