Sheep meat industry welcomes levy expenditure changes

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Once passed, these amendments will enable peak bodies such as SCA to identify the industry issues and priorities of the levy payers.

The Sheepmeat Council of Australia (SCA) has welcomed news that legislation has been introduced by the Turnbull government to provide levy-payers with greater say about levy expenditure.

The amendments to the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Act 1991 will allow levy-payer information, collected by the Australian Government, to be passed on to Research and Development Corporations and industry representative organisations in certain circumstances and for this information to be used only for specific purposes.

“The introduction of this legislation is an important step in empowering industry representative organisations” said SCA President, and WA Producer, Jeff Murray.

According to Mr Murray, “Under the current red meat industry structure, SCA has a prescribed responsibility to represent all levy payers and oversight levy expenditure’.

“This is a responsibility that we take very seriously and we have always strived to be the most effective and representative body possible. However, we are hamstrung in our ability to do this as we are currently unable to identify who the levy payers, the people we represent, actually are” he said.

“Once passed, these amendments will enable peak bodies such as SCA to identify the industry issues and priorities of the levy payers we represent through better engagement with them and therefore empower us to oversight levy expenditure more effectively.”

“We fully support the Governments’ proposed safeguards around this information such as the requirement for the Research and Development Corporations to establish a levy payer register and that access to information in that register is subject to approval by the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources”.

“We understand that this information is sensitive and that carte blanche access would be inappropriate.”

“We commend Minister Joyce and his staff for their foresight in striving for these important reforms” Mr Murray said.

However, we also note time is of the essence for this legislation to pass in an election year and we implore parliament’s support for these important amendments.”