Primary Producers SA has lobbied for a greater contribution from the state government in the March state election to decrease production and levy costs for primary industries, and flip the paradigm on who holds the power to set natural resource management priorities.
The cost of doing business for the sector was the biggest concern for PPSA executive chairman Rob Kerin, as well as the lack of action taken by the state government to allow NRM boards more control on deciding project budgets and employees.
Mr Kerin said the initial intention was to set up state boards which were run by farmers and environment experts, but the situation had become “very bureaucratic.”
“It is pretty much coordinated out of the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources and the boards are not getting enough say in what work they do,” he said.
“PPSA do not have a problem with the department being involved but where the power and priority setting lies is the real problem.”
“Farmers have lost faith in NRM, the boards need to be re-empowered to decide what levies are spent on.”
PPSA policy also outlined that rising costs of NRM and emergency service levies for SA farmers could have an impact on competition with interstate and overseas producers.
Mr Kerin said farmers had been “clobbered” with increased levies.
“Since the removal of remissions, the acknowledgement that regional areas provide their own emergency services has gone out the window,” he said.
“We are paying for the Metropolitan Fire Service to provide a service to the city but in the bush, the people who are paying the emergency services levy are also providing the labour.”
According to Mr Kerin, levy equalisation is also a concern, as levy funds are being distributed between regions.
“Taking from one region and giving it to another defeats the purpose,” he said.
PPSA is pleased with the 90-day project to improve transport access for agriculture, but is pushing for continued commitment regardless of the election’s result.
“It cannot lose traction because it is one way of reducing the cost of business” Mr Kerin said.
SA’s water and electricity prices also weighed heavily on farmers, Mr Kerin said and were hurting businesses because SA did not honour its commitment to the National Water Initiative.
He said when the state government signed off on the initiative about eight years ago, an annual independent review of water management and planning costs in SA was supposed to occur.
“To-date this has not happened, we have real concerns about the inefficiencies of where water management planning money is being spent,” he said.
“Eighteen months ago, NRM levies increased by $6.5 million as a cost recovery for water management planning costs, so the light really needs to be shone on where that money is going and an independent review is the only way of doing that.”
