1. P.P. McGuinness, Consumers lose in sugar game (The National Times, week ending October 6, 1979)
2. Bert Kelly, Sugar — sweet and sour (The Bulletin, August 21, 1984)
3. Bert Kelly, Sugar not so sweet (The Bulletin, August 28, 1984)
4. Bert Kelly, A proper way to behave (The Bulletin, September 18, 1984)
5. Padraic P. McGuinness, Sugar protection just a racket (The Australian, April 30, 1992)
6. Padraic P. McGuinness, Take sugar claims with a pinch of salt (The Australian, November 22, 1993)

1.
P.P. McGuinness, “Consumers lose in sugar game,”
The National Times, week ending October 6, 1979, p. 66.

Once upon a time the Australian sugar industry was famous for its attempt to introduce the nearest approach to slavery which Australia has seen — indentured Kanaka labour. Nowadays, little attention is paid to it despite the fact that the sugar industry is still one of the most curious anomalies in the Australian industrial structure.

It is almost a pattern for bureaucratic State capitalism, all of its operations being controlled in detail by government agencies, and its whole existence in its present form being a creation of government intervention. Virtually nothing in the sugar industry operates or even exists as the result of independent profit-orientated decisions by investors.

The industry has attracted some attention in recent times as a result of the Government’s decision to establish a new system for determining domestic sugar prices in Australia which will not only shield the domestic producers from world price fluctuations, but actually compensate them at the expense of domestic consumers, when world price movements are adverse.

It also makes the sugar industry into the first industry to be granted indexation of its price according to CPI movements — putting it on a par with the unions.

A special report of the Industries Assistance Commission described the structure of the sugar industry. It is subject to Commonwealth legislation, which gives the Commonwealth total control over its exports, and prohibits the import of sugar. Sugar substitutes, such as cyclamates, are subject to crippling import or excise duties, so that the production of low calorie non-sugar sweetened drinks will not be advantaged (sodium cyclamate is subject to the equivalent of a 200 per cent duty).

The industry is actually controlled by the Queensland Government, and its creature the Sugar Board. Of the 7,218 cane farms in Australia, 630 are in NSW, and subject to Queensland Sugar Board control, while the rest are in Queensland.

Under the 1915 Act which still governs the industry, all raw sugar produced in Australia is the property of the State, which is the sole seller.

The Sugar Board determines (with subordinate local boards) the amount of sugar which each canegrower is permitted to produce. It also determines how much land growers can devote to sugar production, how the sugar shall be harvested, what price shall be paid by the mills for the sugar, and who shall be allowed to produce it.

That is, it is not possible to buy sugar production quotas from other canegrowers if you are a grower, nor is it possible to buy a cane farm without the Sugar Board’s approval.

In the 1977 season, there were 9,100 members of cane farmers’ families employed in sugar production, and 2,200 full time employees. The total employment, taking into account seasonal workers, was 13,950 full man years. The 7,218 cane farms were worth an average of $200,000 each.

Cane farmers are “assigned” a mill, which is the only one to which they can deliver. The return to the grower is determined by the Sugar Board, which also controls the grower’s use of his land. After the sugar is milled, the proceeds received by the mills (which sell to the board) are repartitioned by the board among the growers, according to a formula which takes account of the sugar content of the cane. The formula applicable was introduced in 1916.

There are 33 sugar mills in Australia — 30 in Queensland, and three in NSW. Fifteen are owned co-operatively by growers, the rest are privately owned, handling about 60 per cent of total raw sugar production.

The mills must offer any amount of the cane determined as quota by the Sugar Board, and are entitled to compensation if the milling season is longer than usual. The last new sugar mill was established in 1924, although existing mills have been expanded and modernised since.

Total employment in the mills at the peak of the crushing season is about 9,000 workers, and in the slack season about 7,000. Quotas for mill output of raw sugar are determined by the Sugar Board. Any production about this (which is typically below the mills’ optimum capacity) is paid for at $1 a tonne.

The Sugar Board, in terms of a complex arbitrary formula, determines the price which the mills receive, and becomes the sole owner of all the sugar produced.

The sugar is refined by CSR for both export and domestic consumption (with the exception of about 4 per cent of domestically consumed sugar, which is refined by Millaquin Sugar Pty Ltd), but the ownership of the sugar remains with the Sugar Board. CSR is paid a fee per tonne for the refining.

CSR is the sole agent for export sales of sugar. For the purposes of domestic sales, the company has to buy a proportion of the sugar which it, itself, refines from the Sugar Board for sale under its own brand name.

The price of the sugar sold in the domestic market is a matter, hitherto, for arbitrary determination by agreement between the Queensland Government and the Commonwealth.

No one knows what the “true” cost of sugar production is — or at least such knowledge is not publicly available. Since there has never been a free market situation, the true cost of production is in any case a meaningless concept.

The Bureau of Agricultural Economics has never carried out a survey of the economics of the industry, despite its importance in total rural production. What information is available is based on replacement cost accounting, which is not usual nor acceptable to the taxation authorities.

One of the few pieces of objective evidence available on the costs of the sugar industry is the share of total sales revenue collected by the Sugar Board for its own technical and administrative expenses.

It should come as no surprise to students of bureaucratic economics that the Queensland Government costs amounted to 24.3 per cent of gross revenue (returns to the industry from home consumption sales at the administered price plus the government costs) in 1960, and 35.9 per cent of gross revenue in 1977.

Over the long history of the sugar industry, consumption per head of population has remained virtually unchanged, at the extraordinary figure of 50 kilograms per head per year, slightly higher than in other Western countries.

However, the nature of this consumption has changed considerably. In 1960, sales of sugar to retail packagers amounted to 19 per cent of total sales of Queensland Government-owned sugar by CSR as an agent (including those to CSR itself as a packager). In 1969 this proportion rose to 27 per cent, and then fell again to 23 per cent in 1978.

There has been a marked shift towards the consumption of sugar by medium of prepared foods and drinks. The sale of sugar to soft drink manufacturers accounted for 9 per cent of the total in 1960, and 23 per cent in 1978; sales to confectionary and cereal and baked goods manufacturers also increased their share, though not as spectacularly. Interestingly the sale of sugar (much of it in the cheaper form of brewers’ liquid sugar, as a fermentable rather than a sweetener) to the beer industry stayed at a steady 8 per cent.

This probably represents a deliberate manipulation of price to maintain brewery purchases — alternatives are available.

However soft drink manufacturers have been refused even the ability to experiment with brewers’ liquid sugar as a sweetener, since there is no price-competitive sweetener available to them. This is why low calorie soft drinks are so expensive.

The price of sugar in Australia does not reflect its actual cost of production and distribution, nor even its administration price plus delivery costs. Delivery to Tasmania and Darwin is free, so that consumers in other centres subsidise sugar consumption in those areas. Prices in the privileged centres would be $40 a tonne and $70 a tonne higher respectively in the absence of this subsidy.

Besides these and other free delivery areas, there is a sugar price rebate payable to the manufacturers of processed fruits using sugar. There is also a rebate payable to the users of sugar in exported products.

In all but 10 of the last 52 years, the administered price of sugar has resulted in transfers of income from consumers to producers. Over the last 10 years, there were four years in which there were substantial transfers in favour of consumers, as a result of the administered price being considerably below the world price. Henceforth, under the new pricing scheme, this will not occur.

The net result is that Australia possesses one of the most highly organised and bureaucratised examples of “free enterprise” in the world, which is so enmeshed in a network of regulation and quotas that it is impossible really to say whether it is an economically (or managerially) efficient industry.

The main fact that emerges is that Australia has over 7,000 cane growers, 33 sugar mills, one and a bit refiners, and numerous public servants, who lead a totally safe, ensured, and parasitic existence upon the backs of the Australian consumers of sweeteners.

They are allowed little freedom to make any entrepreneurial decisions (with the partial exception of CSR, which is the agent for international market negotiations), and their sole function in life is to draw incomes.

But, regardless of the level of output there is little doubt that in an efficient, uncontrolled sugar producing industry there would be far fewer farmers.

There are no prizes for guessing the political motives which keep the cane growing business in its present form, as a branch of the Queensland State Public Service engaged in what is tantamount to an exercise in disguised taxation of the consumers of sugar.

***
2.
Bert Kelly, “Sugar — sweet and sour,”
The Bulletin, August 21, 1984, p. 135.

Fred has a bee in his bonnet about selling his sheep-wheat farm down here so that he can go to Queensland to grow sugar. I warned him that sugar prices were very low, so the industry was very sick at the moment, but he insisted that this was the right time to buy in. He said nastily:

I know it is your usual practice to buy cattle when they are dear and sell them when they are cheap but that is what has kept you poor, Bert. Wheat farms are selling well just now and sugar land is sure to be cheap because sugar prices are down, so I am going to have a look. Besides, it is lovely and warm up there and wet and cold down here. And they have that wonderful Uncle Sir Joh as their Premier so we wouldn’t have to contend with the creeping socialism that troubles us here. You can stay home, but I’m off.

So to Queensland we went. Getting away was easier than it used to be when we had to sneak past the bank where the banker always seemed to be looking out of his window. But both Fred and I have sons to run our places so the banker let us go without much fuss — and without much money, either!

We called in on Eccles in his ivory tower in Canberra as we drove north. Eccles does not know much about sugar-growing but, of course, that did not prevent him telling us how the industry should conduct its affairs.

Ignorance has never been a barrier to eloquence with Eccles. He told us that, in recent years, the sugar industry has been receiving very little — if any — subsidy from consumers or governments and has been in a fiercely competitive export market bedevilled by heavily subsidised EEC sugar. “But watch out, Fred,” Eccles warned, “the industry is controlled by the Queensland Government in a way a wheat farmer like you may not be able to understand.” But Fred and I knew that he was talking nonsense because everyone is aware that Queensland is the last bastion against socialism.

When we reached the sugar country, Fred went to see a land agent to give him the good news that he was in the market to buy a sugar cane farm — expecting that the agent would be all over him. But it wasn’t like that at all.

The first question the agent asked was not whether Fred had enough money but whether he was a fit and proper person, good enough to be allowed into the industry. This rather staggered Fred. He has always had a suspicion that farmers are more virtuous than other people but he did not realise that you had to demonstrate your virtue before you were allowed to start growing sugar. Evidently, with sugar, virtue is not something you accumulate as you get poorer by farming but you have to have it to start.

Having cast this shadow on Fred’s character, the agent warned him that, even if were as virtuous as Sir Joh himself, there was little chance of his being able to get his hands on an “entitlement” to grow sugar. Evidently, entitlements are a refined way of referring to quotas. They are given out very sparingly; only 16 since 1964.

It is no good having a farm unless you can get an entitlement and these are allotted by people already in the industry. It seems that the sugar cane can of worms hardly turns at all. Just how sick would the wheat industry be now if it had stayed in the same locations and in the same shape over the past 20 years? But, evidently, they hate change in the sugar industry.

Then the agent warned Fred that, even if his character were of the required high standard and if he were fortunate to know someone high up in the industry hierarchy and so got himself an entitlement, he should not delude himself that he could do what he liked on his own farm.

Evidently, a cane farmer is only allowed to grow cane on certain parts of his farm and an inspector comes around to make sure he is not using any others land on the sly. So rotating his crop around his farm to make the best use of its fertility, as we do with wheat, is not allowed. And everything has to be done as the inspector orders; you are not allowed to cut your cane quicker than the sugar mill and its inspector permit and, as we will see next week, the sugar mills also hate having their feather beds disturbed.

While this sad recital was in progress, I watched Fred’s enthusiasm evaporating. The sugar industry evidently hates change but this does not surprise me. Eccles always warns me that all people — even farmers — who get themselves comfortably settled on feather beds hate having to turn over, particularly to let others join them there.

Now that sugar prices are so low, sugar growers would no doubt appreciate having more feathers in their mattress. All the same, I think they would be better off without it.

***
3.
Bert Kelly, “Sugar not so sweet,”
The Bulletin, August 28, 1984, p. 136.

Last week I told how Fred had induced me to go with him to Queenland to see if he should sell his South Australian wheat-sheep property to buy a sugar farm. One reason for this was his conviction that, in Queensland, he would not have to suffer the creeping socialism that dogs us down here.

However, it has been a nasty shock for Fred to find that sugar growing is under the iron hand of the Queensland Government with the willing agreement of the sugar industry leaders who like being looked after even if it is bad for them.

I have had many sceptical enquiries about last week’s statement that Fred would not be allowed into the industry unless he could prove he was a person of good character. People seemed to think I must have made that up. But under section 37 of the Regulation of Sugar Cane Prices Act, applicants to buy land with an entitlement to grow sugar “must demonstrate that the prices or terms of a proposed sale, lease or sub-lease, letting or transfer, are not unreasonable or unfair and that the buyer or lessee is a fit and proper person to hold an assignment.”

There is nothing in writing in the Act about the desirability of being a member of a political party or secret society but no doubt this could be mentioned at the personal interview.

The same Act contains the stern injunction that the Central Sugar Board, when allotting entitlements to grow sugar, must have regard to “the provision of the utmost employment of labour economically possible under reasonable wages and conditions.” It is surprising they do not command their farmers to use horses instead of tractors to create employment.

Last week the land agent scared the daylights out of Fred by telling him how closely the Queensland Government controlled the way cane farmers managed their farms. This week we will take a quick look at how the milling side of the industry is controlled by the government, this last bastion against socialism.

I have before me a copy of the Queensland Government Gazette dated April 20, 1983, which spells out the regulations to control the relations between the Rocky Point Sugar Mill and the growers who supply it. I understand that these are typical of what is required for all mills. There are four closely-printed pages of the most minute directions about what has to be done and when. Crushing had to commence on August 2 this year (3.5 months ahead) and from then on all procedures were either spelt out in regulations or were under the control of the cane inspector who controlled everything else.

The land agent told Fred that the regulations direct each farmer to send his cane to a particular mill. The costs of transport are averaged over all suppliers to the mill, thus destroying any incentive to cut corners in transport.

Further, the allocation of cane to the mills is done on historical and equity grounds rather than on the basis of what is the best way to manage matters today. Yet conditions now are so different to those in 1915 when the industry arrangements seem to have been set in concrete. It is not surprising, then, to find that mill numbers and locations have remained unaltered for 60 years in spite of enormous changes in technology and the size of the industry.

The regulations that control the sugar industry are centred on protecting it from the discomfort of change. The industry was conceived and grew up in the sheltering arms of governments and it hates the thought of being weaned, even late in life. This dependence on government support explains the regulation which I quoted before that demands the maximum use of labour.

I know that change is almost always uncomfortable. But a bucket of worms that stops turning soon dies and people who are not disturbed on their feather beds soon get drowsy.

Cane farmers seem to have faced the traumas of change on their farms but they seem scared of change to their entitlement system and particularly to the way their cane is handled after it leaves their farm gates. Yet such changes are inevitable in the long run.

This is not only the opinion of wheat farmers such as Fred and I or even that know all Eccles. I quote now a retiring official of the Central Sugar Cane Prices Board, who said last year: “The regulations of the Sugar Cane Producers Act creak and growl like an old un-oiled windmill!” Those bushies who have such a windmill — and most of us have — will have a very clear idea of the behaviour of the sugar industry.

Fred came back home with his tail between his legs. He says that he never wants to hear another word about Uncle Sir Joh being the last bastion against socialism.

***
4.
Bert Kelly, “A proper way to behave,”
The Bulletin, September 18, 1984, p. 150.

Eccles, Fred and I are back home after looking at Australia’s sick rural industries.

Fred returned satisfied that the farmers he had seen on his travels were even worse off than he was and this made him as happy as you could expect him to be. Eccles was happy, too, because he loves being miserable about industries. I was the only sad one.

I suppose I have enough political instincts left to want to be loved by all but spelling out the problems of sick industries is not the path to popularity. When I moaned to Eccles about this, he told me that becoming unpopular was a proper way to behave. He warned:

You must expect to be disliked, Bert, if you are doing your duty. Remember what the famous British economist, Alfred Marshall, said last century: “Students of social science must fear popular approval; evil is with them when all men speak well of them. It is almost impossible for a student to be a true patriot and have the reputation for being one at the same time.” So stop being sorry for yourself, Bert. You are not the first person to discover that telling people what they do not want to hear is not a popular pastime.

I suppose Eccles is right. The worst thing about him is that he usually is.

In the middle of April we began four articles setting out the problems and general principles that we expected to run into. Some of these were the inability of governments to set wise production goals, the dangers inherent in production quotas and cost of production marketing arrangements. There were some plaintive pleas that some industry leaders found it difficult to understand the convolutions in their own industries, let alone in others. You can imagine then how nervous members of parliament must feel about exposing their ignorance in public. This is why some industries have got into the mess they are in; no one has been game to give them the nasty medicine they need.

And remember what the Tasmanian Dairy Council said about its industry:

The whole system results in advantages for organisations and companies who are represented on boards and committees and, in doing so, tends to divide the industry into those “in the know” and those on the outside.

Having got all that off our chests, we did four articles about the Riverland, three on dairying, two each on eggs and sugar and one each on rice and tobacco. What did we find?

There was one common problem — the damage done by the European Economic Community to all our industries. Although it may make us feel better to castigate their wickedness, nothing we can say or do will alter them — particularly when we are not lilywhite. We will just have to adjust our production to their perfidy, unless we are prepared to go to war or something.

A pathetic belief persists that government and industry groups can set wise production goals. Limitations on production are set by allotting quotas, entitlements or assignments, to particular producers while denying them to others. This worries me more than it appears to worry producers, though we should realise that it is the industry leaders — those with quotas — who speak for their industries. The poor sods who are denied quotas are hard to hear; they are usually scared of criticising their industry leaders for fear of being regarded when the next quotas are handed out as not being fit and proper persons.

However, apart from the morality problem of giving one person a quota while denying one to his neighbour, there is a bigger problem in the system. A letter from a representative of the sugar millers said: “Production in the sugar industry is controlled to regulate output to meet available markets.” Well, their efforts have been singularly unsuccessful — as this table shows.

YEAR | PRODUCTION in 000 tonnes | PRICE $ per tonne
1974 | 2848 | $259
1975 | 2854 | $236
1976 | 3294 | $218
1977 | 3342 | $188
1978 | 2900 | $213
1979 | 2962 | $285
1980 | 3329 | $375
1981 | 3434 | $275
1982 | 3536 | $223
1983 | 3172 | $280 (est.)

Prices have fluctuated widely while production remains about the same. When the price was $188 in 1977, production was almost the same as in 1980 when the price was $375. I am not critical of them for making mistakes — I make them all the time — but I am critical of their thinking they can give wiser guidance than the market signals.

My mistakes are cancelled out by the mistakes of other farmers, some of which are often in opposite directions. But the mistakes that industries and governments make are always big ones. Also, the desire to be popular is usually stronger than the desire to be right.

Most of the industries in trouble were heavily regulated. The question is: Was this cause or effect?

***
5.
Padraic P. McGuinness, “Sugar protection just a racket,”
The Australian, April 30, 1992, p. 11.

Tinned tomatoes imported into Australia at subsidised prices which undercut our local tomato-growing and canning industry unfairly can be dealt with by anti-dumping and countervailing duties, consistent with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade — why not sugar?

This has been the missing element in the debate over the proposed removal of sugar tariffs and serves to highlight how issues can be deliberately confused by those who wish to retain subsidies for their favoured industries in Australia regardless of the public interest.

While it is true that the world sugar price is “corrupted” by subsidies paid by foreign governments to their sugar producers, and the resulting surplus output dumped in world markets to depress prices below the true cost of production, there is a simple answer easily available to the Australian sugar industry. That is, like the tomato industry, to ask for countervailing duties to bring the import price of sugar up to its true cost of production.

Why has this not been proposed and why have the advocates of high tariffs on sugar imports (which replace what was not so long ago a complete embargo) not asked for such action?

The truth is simple. They are not worried about competition from foreign-produced, subsidised sugar but competition from Australian sugar. For the one source of sugar which cannot be accused of dumping, which is not otherwise subsidised and which is excluded from competing in the Australian market by the high tariff on sugar, is Australia.

The tariff allows sugar here to be priced at a level much higher than the cost of production in Australia, and it prevents users (industrial and retailers) from re-importing Australian sugar to undercut the tariff-determined price. Countervailing duties, of course, could not be applied to such re-imports, since they are well known to include subsidy. It is a paradoxical position, that we are protecting the sugar industry against itself — at considerable cost, of course, to the users and final consumers.

Over the past couple of financial years this has amounted to a rip-off of the community by the sugar producers of $103 million a year, according to the calculations of the Industry Commission in its final report on the sugar industry, tabled in Parliament yesterday.

An estimated $16 million of this derives from the fact that the industry can base its prices on import parity prices rather than export prices — that is, even if there were no tariffs there would be “natural” protection due to transport and similar costs of that amount. An additional $87 million a year came from the higher prices charged as a result of the tariff. (On a net basis this would be rather less as a result of some price rebates by the sugar board.)

The real area of corruption in sugar prices as far as Australia is concerned is the extraordinary system of regulation of the Queensland sugar industry which began during World War I. This has become one of the classic examples of Country Party socialism, the system often described as “capitalising the profits and socialising the losses”. This has in the past couple of years been modified, but essentially the Queensland sugar industry remains an example of an industry which is subject to almost total direction and control by the authorities.

Far from this working to the benefit of the industry and the economy, the Industry Commission has concluded that the industry would be better off if most of the regulation were removed: its total output and profitability would increase, and what is more the volume and value of sugar exports and the contribution of the industry to gross domestic product would increase substantially.

It is true that we are not facing a “level playing field” as far as world markets are concerned. This is by no means a one-way proposition — although it is true that if the subsidies and domestic protection for sugar in the developed countries were removed, world sugar prices would be higher, at the same time changes in the policies of countries like Brazil (which uses a large proportion of its sugar production as an uneconomic source of ethanol) could well lead to an increase in world market supplies and hence a further fall in prices.

So while it makes sense for us to pester developed countries to improve their practices, we actually benefit from some of the distortions in the world market.

The commission says:

As a small country operating independently in the world market, Australia must operate within the prices that currently exist, and adapt to those prices.

In terms of the range of alternative opportunities for Australian investment, it is largely immaterial why prices in the world market are the way they are unless Australia has the opportunity to influence them. If they are low because of natural factors and/or market characteristics, or low because of massive subsidies, it makes little difference to the choices facing Australia.

Australia is better off to adjust to these prices rather than attempt to deny them. Only if there is a likelihood that the observed prices are temporary, or that Australian policies could influence them, would there be a case for action.

Even in this situation, if the prospects of long-term viability exist once prices return to ‘normal’, the question arises as to whether the industry itself should not bear the costs associated with temporary downturns.

This is, of course, too much like common sense to appeal to the critics of “economic rationalism”. If world prices are lower than we would like, and there is nothing we can do about it, then we just have to adjust to them.

What is more, while undoubtedly there would be some losers among sugar growers if the tariff were removed progressively as at present suggested, there would not necessarily be any significant social impact on the cane-growing communities — an important consideration in evaluating the desirability of removal of regulation and support.

The industry could well increase in size as a result of removal of restrictions on land use and compulsory acquisition of the crop. That is, traditional sugar communities would not disappear with removal of the tariff and the present apparatus of regulation.

There is some evidence that the NSW sugar growers, however, could be quite hard hit — the removal of tariffs could cost them a substantial proportion of their present incomes. The IC therefore recommends a compensatory package which would put the emphasis on income support rather than producer support.

However, it is not the representatives of the NSW sugar growers who are making the most fuss about the proposals for reform. It is the Queensland politicians, Ray Braithwaite and Senators Ronald Boswell and William O’Chee, who are the main protestors. These are the politicians of the National Party who are defending the least defensible aspects of the present sugar industry structure and subsidies.

There is no reason why this ancient collection of rorts should be preserved. Unlike the rest of the primary sector, the sugar industry producers enjoy special privileges. It is, of course, correct that reforms in the rest of the economy should proceed apace, so that the sugar producers should not be singled out. But they are the worst example of agricultural sector rorts, so why not start with them?

***
6.
Padraic P. McGuinness, “Take sugar claims with a pinch of salt,”
The Australian, November 23, 1993, p. 48.

It is amazing how sensitive the defenders of the Queensland sugar growers can be when the crookedness of the politics that defends their industry is exposed. They can even suggest irrational motives for criticising the shonkiest of all Australian industries.

Thus, when a few weeks ago I made a few remarks on the hypocrisy evident in the Government pretending we are a “fair trading” nation while allowing the scandal of the sugar industry to continue, I was even accused of having some kind of childhood psychological hang-up about sugar. When the white-shoe brigade tries to resort to amateur psychoanalysis like any third-rate academic historian, it is clearly scraping the barrel.

One of the results of the manner in which the sugar industry was run for many years (which made it the most highly regulated industry in the world, including Cuba) in the interests of older producers in the industry is that we still do not have an export-oriented sugar refining industry. It has suited the growers to export raw sugar, while refining has been for domestic consumption alone, and the prices manipulated by import prohibitions and other means to the benefit of the growers.

Now, however, an export refinery is being built for the first time near the growing areas, which will come into operation in the first half of next year. This was initially a joint venture by the Mackay Sugar Co-operative and ED&F Man; CSR has now also joined in The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics has just published a research report that looks at the impact the export of refined sugar, as well as raw sugar, is likely to have on sugar prices and revenues.

It concludes that the export of refined sugar is likely to increase the price of raw sugar (because of the reduction in supplies to the world market) and the premium white sugar prices over raw sugar prices will contract. It reads:

As 90 per cent of Australian exports would still be raw sugar, the effects of any such decision for the Australian sugar industry are likely to be felt principally through the impact on the world raw sugar prices.

The effect of higher raw sugar prices may be significant. Revenue for the Australian raw sugar industry may increase by around $23 million a year from a switch of 300,000 tonnes from raw to white sugar exports in Australia. This represents a revenue increase for grower of around $2500 a year.

Of course, the bureau qualifies its results: assumptions have to made as to the responsiveness of other producing and refining countries. But the report does suggest that much of the political argument surrounding sugar industry policy during the last election campaign had little to do with the welfare of the sugar industry as a whole, nor with increasing Australia’s export revenues, but was simply a defence of vested interests.

As one of the authors of the Industries Assistance Commission report on the sugar industry, Geoff Edwards, puts it in a review of government failure in the sugar and wool industries in a recent (August 1993) issue of the Review of Marketing and Agricultural Economics, writing of the taskforce which the Government set up to develop a “growth strategy” for the sugar industry, “there was no reason to think that any of the taskforce members would consider net gains to Australia an important criterion in assessing sugar industries policies”.

The Minister, Simon Crean, said last November: “The taskforce is working extremely well … I think that is an admirable step forward, given that what we have done for the first time in this industry is to bring together the producers, the processors, the marketers and the distributor.”

Everybody, in fact, except the users and consumers of sugar, who are, as usual, being screwed by sugar policy.

However, the members of the taskforce could not agree among themselves, since they had conflicting interests. Thus, while it agreed that the export marketing monopoly should be retained, it could not agree on the continuance of compulsory acquisition if the crop for domestic purposes.

Under this pooling system, “old” producers are subsidised by “new” producers using more productive land but the taskforce did not recommend changing the system.

The ultimate absurdity of the taskforce report, as Edwards points out, was in its opinion on the potential for refined sugar exports. It said: “Given the nature of international trade in both raw and white sugar, the refinery process is perhaps better viewed as the conversion of one commodity to another, rather than value adding.”

Yes, just as, no doubt, the conversion of raw wool to garments, or silicon to computer chips is merely the conversion of one commodity to another.

This is a classical example of how conservative interests in a traditional industry block the development of Australia’s export potential since it would not serve their own interests.

Of course, the behaviour of the National Party politicians from the sugar seats, when they held both parties to ransom at the last election, was an aspect of this. In the event, both parties went to water and tried to placate the cynical Queensland log-rollers.

The Government, which did not have much hope of being re-elected last March, went furthest and made the highest bid for sugar votes. It froze the sugar tariff (there is, of course, absolutely no justification for tariffs on imported sugar) for three years, to be reviewed in 1995-96. Compulsory acquisition by the Queensland Sugar Corp was continued. The assignment system whereby the actual land to be used in production is determined by central authority, was retained with minor modifications.

Thus, for all intents and purposes, we have a regulatory regime still in force for the sugar industry that penalises new and successful producers, reduces exports, removes incentives to new producers to export by taxing them for the benefit of old producers and discourages the development of additional export refining capacity. And, as Edwards says: “The QSC does not face the pressure to keep costs down that it would experience with competition in marketing.”

Of course, it will be argued the heavy subsidies from consumers to the industry and the controls have a social function, the preservation of sugar towns.

In fact, of course, their justification is the preservation of the profits of those who control the industry, and that alone.