Rural Australia

fiduciary. 1) n. from the Latin fiducia, meaning “trust,” a person (or a business like a bank or stock brokerage) who has the power and obligation to act for another ….

The question is whether the power ceded MLA by Parliament and overseen by ASIC, is being used as intended? I am sure MLA wouldn’t be intentionally acting against the best interests of its funder tax-paying members. However, the way it seems to measure its effectiveness is through advertising indicators, I would suggest its producer members would prefer different measures e.g. real on-property returns and price/kg paid by processors since the advent of MLA.

Producer members on the whole don’t vote at the MLA AGM, (last year 2.5% of levy payers obtained their voting entitlements) leaving huge voting power in the hands of their natural enemies, the processors who can and do also vote and some large producers, many according to Australian Beef Association receive MLA funding. (Processors have their own organisational and political Association but are allowed to vote at MLA because their pre-slaughter holding areas have a PIC).

This obviously means that MLA has a serious philosophical conflict as it is not going to be able to focus just on the needs of producers if it has also to listen to its processor members.
Why was MLA implemented? I think it was to look after producers who in turn would pay a tax to support such. I don’t think producers were to be taxed to have MLA look after the processors as a primary goal alongside producers. (Of course processors need to be considered as an important part of the supply chain but from a producer’s perspective).

I think it would help MLA to side-step the political brawling it is involved in with producer groups and start again with a focus on the producer. However, it would seem the only way this is now possible is to dump MLA and replace it with a new group with a producer focus. It happened in the Wool Industry and perhaps the time has come for meat livestock.

(The MLA AGM is at Longreach on November 17. Australian Beef Association is urging all producers with voting entitlements to forward them their proxies to be used to gain a focus on producer needs Ref:ABA Website).