Cattle Council levy push "immoral": Maconochie

By James Nason 31 Oct 2012

Sandy Maconochie

Prominent southern cattle producer and beef marketer Sandy Maconochie has hit out at the Cattle Council of Australia’s ongoing restructure process, branding its push to secure transaction levy funds for its own use as “immoral and out of control”.

Mr Maconochie runs a vertically-integrated cattle breeding, lot feeding and value-adding enterprise based at Dunkeld in western Victoria. The family operation markets its popular Hopkins River beef brand to domestic consumers around the country.

After serving as a long-term director and former president of the Australian Lot Feeders Association, Mr Maconochie retired from active involvement with the organisation at the recent BeefEx conference on the Gold Coast.

Mr Maconochie said that after watching the Cattle Council of Australia restructure process unfold in recent months, he felt compelled to speak out about the direction it is taking.

His key concerns surround CCA’s plans to solve its funding shortfall by accessing a component of the $5/head transaction levy. He sees the move as an easy option that ignores the fundamental problems that led to organisation’s funding crisis, and amounts to an attempt by directors to “cling to power”.

“By raiding the levy to keep afloat, yet sticking to a similar model that caused them to gradually go down the gurgler in the first place, is a cop out and one that threatens the whole fabric of decent representation,” Mr Maconochie told Beef Central.

Mr Maconochie said he acknowledged the extensive cattle industry needed a strong advocacy body to adequately represent it, but believed it should be entirely divorced from the State Farmer Organisation system.

“The SFOs are dying in most states due to former members being disgruntled with their lack of proper representation, so CCA’s compromise approach with its A, B and C options is simply a continuance of its heads in the sand,” he said.

“Take Victoria for example, bar the current immediate past-president, the previous three are all in state government furthering their political ambitions whilst the VFF is dying a slow death.

“SFOs and their commodity groups such as CCA all pay themselves sitting fees and thus it becomes very important to belong with some off-farm income.”

He suggested that Cattle Council should adopt the same model as ALFA which is based on a national board of directly-elected members, and draws revenue from a combination of direct membership fees and corporate sponsorship, with an additional $150,000 a year provided through the RMAC fund.

ALFA directors were paid for expenses incurred but did not receive sitting fees, a model which attracted the best people who were genuinely dedicated to serving their industry, he said.

“They seem loathe to adopt the ALFA model which would provide the solution very quickly.

“Imagine should they be directly elected to a national body and organise events and build a model that receives sponsors, they would line up from afar keen to be a part of it. They wouldn’t then have any trouble getting thousands of producers to join.”

Mr Maconochie said he believed Cattle Council had been fixed on the agenda of securing levy funds from the outset when it became clear the organisation was doomed financially, and he believed the consultation roadshow was never going to change its mind.

He said Option C Lite, as detailed in Beef Central yesterday, was moving closer to the direct election model, but was still focused on securing levies.

In his view the restructure process should focus on addressing the reasons that had led to lack of membership funding, rather than accessing a portion of the levy.

“They have to realise it is not about levies but about their failure to survive in face of lack of representation on behalf of grass fed levy payers,” Mr Maconochie said.

“They must leave MLA out of this debate.

“Yes, direct MLA in its function of accountable marketing and R & D expenditure, which after all is their responsibility as a Peak Industry Council, but fund their activities from members, sponsors, events and workshops etc, not levies.

“If they persist with this levy approach I can see a differential levy in the making.

“Reverting back to $3.50 I am sure would get widespread support. Don’t be surprised to see Grainfed at $3.50 and Grassfed at $5. Maybe they will get the message then.”

Mr Maconochie said that with Cattle Council of Australia on the financial ropes, it should have access to levies via MLA for a short period to get a direct model up and running, but with a sunset clause for levy funding to terminate after one year.

·         Beef Central sought a comment on the Cattle Council of Australia restructure process from the Australian Lot Feeders Association but chief executive officer Dougal Gordon said the association has chosen not to commen as the matter was one for Cattle Council to address on its own. "ALFA has been given the opportunity to have input in the process and we have done so at each stage," he said.