Bert Kelly, Quadrant, September, 1991, pp. 51-53. Based on a speech delivered to the Australian Cane Farmers Association on 9th April 1991.
I had many sad experiences during the nineteen years I was in Federal Parliament. I was elected in 1958, and in 1959 I was made a member of the Forster Committee which was asked to advise the Commonwealth Government on the steps that should be taken to develop agriculture in the Northern Territory. At that stage there was some excitement because scientists had found that they could grow peanuts in the Top End of the Territory. They also knew that cattle in the Top End increase rapidly in weight during the flush wet season when the grass is green, and then lost most of that weight during the dry when the native pasture lost most of its protein. The idea was to grow peanuts and crush the oil from them and export it and then use the protein-rich peanut meal to feed Top End cattle during the dry. So this was done and it really worked; the cattle which were fed the peanut meal gained weight as expected. The more meal they ate the more weight they gained. But the trouble was the more meal they ate the more money we lost. The sad truth was that cattle raised on good grass in the south were cheaper to raise than cattle fed peanut meal in the Northern Territory. This made me sad because by this time I had realised that governments love closer settlement schemes and one based on peanuts would have obvious attractions.
Then I thought that, if we could not have a closer settlement scheme based on feeding peanut meal to cattle, perhaps we could have one based on selling peanuts in their shells to kids in cinemas in the south. But this idea was brushed aside by people in the know. “Don’t be silly, Bert,” they said. “Charlie Adermann is the Minister for Primary Industry in Canberra and he lives at Kingaroy where they grow peanuts so surely you can see that, with Charlie sitting on the peanut well, there is no chance of the Government mothering a closer settlement based on selling peanuts in the shell in competition with peanut growers in Kingaroy.
Now I have been carefully reared, so I did not know what they meant about Mr Adermann sitting on the peanut well. So they explained that once the legendary couple, Dave and Mabel, stayed at a hotel in Sydney where the plumbing was much better than at home. At ten that night Mabel asked Dave to get her a drink of water which he did. At eleven he had to get her another and again at twelve. But this time he came back with an empty glass. “What’s wrong, Dave?” Mabel asked. He replied, “There’s someone sitting on the well.” Then I understood.
I had another sad experience in the NT. I knew that the Commonwealth Government, like all governments, loved building dams. Indeed I used to say that at each election I could feel a dam coming on. By then I knew enough about politics to realise I would further my political career if I could advocate the building of a dam on the Ord River. I spent some time at the Kimberley Research Station on the Ord and I knew they could grow cotton there, but I also knew that all around them grew the plants on which the pests that ate cotton lived. So I knew the more cotton they grew, the more expensive would be their spraying costs, so the more money they would lose. But no-one took any notice of me, so the Ord Dam was built and some splendid speeches were made when it was commissioned and I used to be called “Knocker Kelly”. When the cotton growers went broke spraying their insects I made another desperate effort to climb the political ladder by suggesting that they produce sugar instead of cotton on the Ord. I knew we could grow sugar-cane and I thought if the sugar infrastructure was put in before they started producing the cane, then perhaps they would be able to produce sugar as cheaply as in Queensland where everybody knows live the best sugar producers in the world. I also knew that, even if we were to double Australia’s sugar production, we would not flood the world’s sugar market as we only produce about three per cent of the world market for sugar.
So I mentioned these matters nervously to the good and great in Canberra, but again they brushed me aside. “Surely you have learnt the facts of political life by now, Bert,” they explained kindly. “You must know that the Minister, Mr Adermann, comes from Queensland where they are experts at producing sugar and he would not want to see Ord sugar competing with Queensland sugar.” They gave me the impression that Charles was sitting on the sugar well, too.
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I was finding the political ladder hard going, but worse was to come. In the early 1960s there was a Bounty Bill to subsidise the production of our butter, so we could keep the price high here and sell it cheaply overseas. When others do this well call it “dumping”. But when I told my dairy farmers if we kept the price of butter as low as they did in New Zealand and so consumed as much per head as they did, then we would not have a butter surplus to worry about but we would have to import butter from New Zealand. This made me more unpopular.
When I finished my speech, the MP who represented Gippsland, the best dairying land in Australia, snarled at me, “Asking my dairy farmers to compete on equal terms with NZ dairy farmers just shows how ignorant you are, Bert. Surely you must know that good dairying land in Gippsland is worth £500 an acre while New Zealand land is far cheaper.” But Gippsland land was dearer because they got the butter bounty so of course they felt that they should continue to get the butter bounty. I often wonder if sugarcane land is so expensive because the price of sugar consumed locally is kept so high. The trouble is I do not know whom to ask. Perhaps someone will tell me after the meeting.
Then I got into trouble with my wheat farmers when I told them that, if they were successful in their efforts to twist the arm of the government to make it keep the wheat price artificially high, then we would probably produce more wheat than we could sell and perhaps we would have to have a wheat quota scheme which allowed farmers who have grown wheat in the past to continue to grow it but would deny this right to others, even young battlers who had bravely cleared country to grow wheat when they were told their futures were assured. This was a shameful period in our wheat history except for those who had a wheat quota and so were sitting on the wheat well.
I have always been interested in the way milk producers get around Section 92 of the Constitution which says that trade and commerce between the states must be absolutely free. I once asked a Queensland milk producer whether he was concerned that cheaper Victorian milk might flood the Queensland market. His reply was prompt. “Sir Joh would never allow it to happen.” Evidently Sir Joh was sitting on the milk well.
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It is really surprising that I lasted nineteen years in Parliament. In August 1984, when I was back on the farm, my neighbour, Farmer Fred, got unhappy about life on his sheep and wheat farm and he nagged me to take him to Queensland which he regarded as our last refuge against the blight of socialism which was destroying the rest of Australia and where Joh was valiantly holding it at bay. So off we went, with Fred with enough money to buy a sugar cane farm. We called in at Canberra where our economic adviser, Eccles, lives in his ivory tower. Fred told him that he was going to escape from socialism, but Eccles warned him to prepare for some nasty shocks.
When we reached one of the nice sugar towns in Queensland, Fred saw a land agent’s sign and went in to give him the good news that the wanted to buy a cane farm to get away from socialism and all that. I sneaked off to speak to the local MP who I knew as a statesman of high degree who I found slaving away in his office. Fred was in the agent’s office for hours and came out wearing a worried frown. He explained that evidently not just anyone can buy a cane farm. He even quoted Section 37 of the Sugar Cane Prices Act which says that a cane grower must be able to demonstrate that he is a fit and proper person before he can be given a licence to grow sugarcane.
When Fred told me this I suggested that perhaps the agent wanted to know to which political party he belonged. “Show him your Liberal Party ticket,” I advised, so Fred did this and came back with his tail between his legs. “He says he never heard of the Liberal Party,” he said sourly. And then Fred went through all the regulations that hold the sugar industry in an iron grip.
I know that that silly Section 37 has been scrubbed and some others also, but there are plenty left. You know them better than I do and I will not parade them before you lest you think I am doing so to expose you to the derision of the rest of the world. I know that these regulations not only tell you growers how, when or where to grow your cane, but your millers are told how to operate their mills also.
Because I come from the south and know nothing about growing sugarcane, I will not expose my ignorance before you. Instead I will quote the retiring Chairman of the Central Sugar Cane Prices Board who said in 1983, “The regulations of the Sugar Producers Act creak and groan like an old unoiled windmill.” I had a windmill just like that and I know how he felt.
I have been told that you have been trying to change some of these regulations, but you must know how many remain. When I received the invitation to speak to you today, I was told that one reason was that I had suggested that rural industry needed a think-tank. All other sections of the economy have been greatly helped by these think-tanks that bravely tell people what they do not want to hear. I know that my tariff campaigns have been greatly helped by these think-tanks and I think rural Australia needs them as never before. The mess we made of wool is a grim example. Our political influence is falling as our numbers fall, so we need clear thinking logic as never before. I know we have the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and I greatly value them. But they are under control of the Minister who might perhaps not want one of his pets looked at too closely. And it would not have been easy for even a Minister as good as Kerin to tell the wool-growers what were the facts of life which they did not want to hear. Those of us who have been trying to talk tariff sense to secondary industry have been greatly helped by the Industry Commission, but we have need the think-tanks also. I think we desperately need a rural think-tank. Perhaps its first task should be to have a close look at the regulations that control sugar production in Australia.
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With this problem on my mind I called in to see Eccles because I thought he might want the job. He was delighted. “I am just the man to do it. I am about the only person in this ivory tower who is not on some committee of inquiry or other. I think it is a splendid idea.”
However, on second thought a big inquiry would not be necessary. Perhaps all the Queensland Government would need to do would be to encourage the production of sugar in a big way in the Burdekin. I remember that was one of the justifications for building the dam. At least then it would be in Queensland’s tender care. But if this is forbidden, perhaps we could encourage either the Commonwealth or the West Australian government to encourage sugar growing on the Ord. It would be nice for this great engineering achievement to be used for more than growing a few melons and for water-skiing. And if that happened I bet you chaps down here, where you are really expert at sugar-cane production, would smartly show the Ord people how to do things properly. And I bet the first thing you would do would be to remove the short and strong hobbles that now hinder you. Perhaps evens Tate & Lyle would be prepared to help you with the Ord development. Surely you people would not try to sit on that well.
Later …
Well, Tate & Lyle took the easy way out and climbed into the Bundaberg featherbed instead of tackling the Ord as I hoped. I was disappointed, but not surprised: featherbeds are always tempting for big, powerful people. In 1980 I wrote about featherbeds that flew, and how the Ansett bed was kept so comfortable by the government’s two-airline policy that Rupert Murdoch and Peter Abeles climbed aboard and poor Sir Reggie was pushed out. So I was not surprised that Tate & Lyle preferred the Bundaberg bed; it is just what I would expect a big, powerful company to do. But the two-airline policy is now gone and the airline featherbed is pretty crowded right now. I have a suspicion that, in ten years’ time, the Australian sugar bed will get crowded too. It is a common fate of featherbeds.
Before I gave this talk, I had a quick look at the hotel swimming pool, half expecting that I might be thrown in after the can growers had heard me. But they didn’t seem to mind much, not the younger ones anyway. I guess some of them realised that changes in the sugar industry are inevitable.
My suggestion about producing sugar on the Ord is not fanciful. We know that it will grow well there. We know too the Ord dry season is really dry and that there is plenty of cheap water for irrigation. And you would not need to have can farms located close to sugar mills by being tied to their mills by small railways. These were necessary in Queensland when the industry was young, but now we could cart the cut cane for bigger distances in really big motor trucks. So the mills could be bigger and probably more efficient.
If Tate & Lyle really want to produce sugar for the Asian market and have the guts to do it without government “guidance” and Sugar Board “help”, I reckon they should have a hard look at the Ord.
