Fears for sugar industry

Fear for jobs: Tully Sugar Mill chairman Dick Camilleri.

TULLY Sugar Mill chairman Dick Camilleri told a Senate Inquiry last week that jobs and the region's sugar cane industry was at serious risk from market distortion caused by Managed Investment Schemes.

More than 3000ha has been lost to trees, which is about 10-12 per cent of the region's cane land, and the loss of a further 6000ha would devastate the viability of the mill.

"There is all this talk of saving good quality agricultural land, especially rain feed land like we have, and yet they are looking at locking it up for 20 years,'' he said.

"It really is a case of one industry destroying another but it is coming at the expense of taxpayers.''

Mr Camilleri said young farmers wanting to buy land had been priced out of the market by cashed-up investors and he hoped the inquiry would lead to the government legislating an equal playing field.

"We don't mind competing but for one side to be subsidised at the expense of another is not right,'' he said.

The inquiry also heard from CSR representative John Pratt and representatives from the Australian Sugar Milling Council, Canegrowers and Property Rights Australia.

Mr Pratt told the inquiry land prices were being inflated by as much as $4000 per hectare or between 20 to 50 percent due to the massive tax incentives that MIS's enjoy.

Senator Ron Boswell said industry representatives gave consistent evidence that similar tax deductions, already enjoyed by MIS's, distort the market to the extent that landholders from other industries find it difficult to compete.

"The Australian Sugar Milling Council CEO Max Craigie told the inquiry that there are around 3500 full time and 1500 seasonal workers in the 26 sugar mills and throughout Australia,'' he said.

"I would not like to see these 5000 sugar industry jobs, which contribute wealth to regional economies, put at risk because companies that are planting trees have a massive tax advantage over those who produce sugar,'' he said.

"This is a lemon of a law that will potentially see prime agricultural land locked up for years all because of a tax deduction.''

source:cairns