CHANGES to a farm worker Industrial Relations Award means that fruit pickers will now receive a guaranteed minimum wage but Federal Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, says the farmers will bear the brunt of an increase in costs in the supermarket as a result.
“The decision by the Fair Work Commission to provide a minimum wage for farm workers is a good decision because it will encourage people to become farm workers and not have to get everyone from overseas.
“Having said that, cost structures have to be born by the farmers – they can’t pass it on.
“We have only two or three people that sell fruit and vegetables in Australia and combined they have over 75 percent of the market. They pay the farmers whatever they feel like paying the farmers.”
Mr Katter said that farm incomes from the supermarkets giants had barely changed in the last 30 years ago but the price of food to the consumer has skyrocketed more than 250 percent.
“The real problem here is that the farmers had their collective bargaining rights taken off them. For the workers, this is a good thing that they have got their bargaining rights, but the farmers don’t have their bargaining rights because the National Party deregulated most of their industries.
“So yes, the workers can and should be given a better go but the people who are going to be punished here are the farmers and the benefit to the consumer, is nil.
“There is a as much chance of the supermarket giants passing on that charge and giving it to the farmers as I have got of becoming a beetle rider from Booroola.
“So, Mr Government, give back to the farmers their right to collectively bargain. The workers have that right and they should have it and the farmers should have it.
“You took it off them and they’ve been screwed through the floor. There were 270,000 of them, now there is a 160,000 of them. What a cruelty. What a cruelty. And the Australian people are paying the price.
“All those changes, clearly, we know who profited by them. It wasn’t the worker. It wasn’t the consumer, and it most certainly wasn’t the farmer.”
I have been buying my meat for nearly 2 years now from ourcow.com.au they are near Byron and support a lot of farms I live in Victoria and get my meat delivered every month and the meat tastes to much different to what you buy in the supermarkets
The penultimate paragraph says it all, there were 270000 farmers, now there are 160000, give it time folks and Billy Goats will have us all eating insects and maggots.
Actually, i wouldn’t mind that too much if the first two maggots were Billy Goats and Fauci.
All workers, including farm workers deserve a fair days pay for a fair days work,
Bob, as usual, doesn’t get it.
That fruit and vegetable pickers should have had the minimum wage 70 years ago is why only the most desperate will do the work. And, of course, why foreign workers have taken Australian jobs.
The reason pickers get justice now has nothing to do with compassionate legislators. The intention is to squeeze the growers out of business. In the US and elsewhere, there is a campaign to reduce food production, either with forced fallow land, denial of irrigation water, shortage of fertilisers, inflation of fuel prices, or the mRNA deaths of producers.
Thus, the general population, 70% of whom are already dying in slow motion from the jab, will also starve to death.
Soon they will have any number of cancers ravaging their bodies, with growth accelerated by the rBGH and rBST in meat and milk, the exceptions being raw milk and pasture-fed meat.
Bob, I tried to talk to you a decade ago but, as usual, you know best.
Farmers may soon have access to free labour. State governments have built concentration camps – up to 3000 beds – to house the non-vaxxed when it soon starts rounding them up. Like those on the chain-gangs in some US states, the inmates will be put to work to pay for their keep. The inmates will most likely be hired out to farmers, or farmers might even be paid -enough to cover accommodation and upkeep of those they utilise.
Desperate Dan in Victoria intends any non-vaxxed apprehended will have to pay ALL costs associated with their incarceration in the detention camps. Inmates will jump at the chance of working to pay for their punishment.
Shop Aldi or IGA or your small local grocer or get a Co-op going. The way that Woolworths employee treated that lady wanting to sign in manually is a disgrace and as human beings we need to stand up for our fellow man, “There but by the grace of God go I”
We don’t shop there any more… or use Qantas, Bunnings & most pharmacies & medical centers. Making a lot of new friends too now… real genuine ones for a change 🙂
The national and state politburos will be importing fruitpickers for sure. No way the Australians who had their businesses ruined and got kicked out of their jobs over the vaxx mandate will get those jobs. The Party bosses will just fly in the workers. And if they belong to an ethnic or religious group that is in conflict with Australian law, culture and way of life – they’ll get preferentially optioned. This is like Stalin’s Five Year Plan to get rid of the Kulaks (small independent farmers) and collectivize Soviet agriculture.
I am not going to purchase fruit and veg from these coys any more. We have a great green grocer at Mt Eliza at Benton Square. We need to think strategically where we spend our money Mrs Fox or we are doomed.
C M
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