Australian Dairy Farmers president Ben Bennett said dairy farmers would welcome practical measures aimed at easing input cost pressures and improving national resilience, however the budget failed to include any direct dairy support package, despite mounting challenges across many farming regions.
“Dairy farmers are battling prolonged drought and feed shortages, escalating energy, fertiliser and labour costs, water insecurity, increasing regulatory compliance costs, workforce shortages and more, yet we’ve seen little meaningful support in this budget,” Mr Bennett said.
“We welcome the constructive steps that may provide some assistance to dairy businesses but have not seen the widespread structural support we’d hoped for.”
ADF said stronger ACCC capability and competition enforcement was a positive step, particularly given growing concern about transparency, pricing behaviour and market concentration across the food supply chain.
“The supply chain that ultimately ends at retail is no longer delivering sustainable outcomes for dairy farmers,” Mr Bennett said.
“Farmers are facing increasing costs of production while the market continues to reward scale and buying power over long-term sustainability.
“Greater scrutiny, transparency and enforcement capability is needed to ensure competition laws are working as intended and that farmers are not carrying disproportionate risk within the supply chain.”
However, ADF criticised the lack of any meaningful support measures to offset the impacts of the Australia-European Union Free Trade Agreement (EUFTA), which the industry has consistently warned risks placing additional pressure on Australian dairy farmers without delivering commercially meaningful market access outcomes in return.
“Australian dairy farmers are being exposed to increased import competition and additional trade pressure without corresponding support for domestic production,” Mr Bennett said.
“The budget contains no meaningful support to help Australian consumers identify and back local dairy products, no domestic dairy promotion package and no response to the increasing competitive pressure flowing from trade outcomes such as EUFTA.”
Also in the budget, strawberries have been targeted for a small biosecurity levy, a move the government has made on the advice of industry, budget papers show.
But another component of the strawberry levy relating to research and development is being pared back, meaning the sweet lunch-box staples are unlikely to become dearer.
"The measure is estimated to decrease payments by $0.1 million over the five years from 2025-26," budget documents say.
– With AAP
