Beef producers in the Southern Downs received bad news last week from China, described as a “massive blow” to the cattle industry.
Beef imports into China will be capped at a certain limit, with tariffs of 55 percent over that limit. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has assured producers that the government are in talks with China over the new tariffs. Australia is only one of many countries, including Brazil and Argentina, which will be affected. The US is also included but has the lowest national herd levels since the 1950s and is not likely to be exporting to China to any significant degree currently.
Member for Maranoa and Leader of the National Party, David Littleproud, calls the move “a kick in the guts.””
“You’re going to lose a billion dollars off your bottom line, because an arbitrary decision by China, because their economy is tanking,” Mr Littleproud told the media. “\And the reality is, it's not Australia that causing any grief to their local production. It's in fact the significant imports from South America, and this is where the Albanese government need to step up.”
Cattle Australia chair Garry Edwards said that Australian consumers may see a reduction in domestic beef prices as a result “because you’ll see more high-quality beef available within the domestic market”.
Mr Littleproud is more interested in selling Australian beef to Chinese authorities.
“Industry has done a great job in articulating that to the Chinese authorities, that we're not a threat. We're less than 10 per cent of their total beef imports. Most of it comes from Brazil, and what they're doing is taking away the reliance, the continued reliance of a trusted partner like us, where we don't have the diseases that South American producers have, that would be putting them at risk in the long term. So, Anthony Albanese and Don Farrell need to make sure that they're in there and they get a carve-out for us, because anything above, 206,000 tonnes, gets a 55 per cent tariff, which effectively means it's unviable. We'll do that probably in about July. We'll have done that many tonnes by about July, August, I would suspect, on, on recent trajectories.”
The new criteria put in place by China caught Australia by surprise. Mr Littleproud blames Australian diplomats in China for sleeping on the job.
“I just don’t think the message through to Chinese authorities has been strong enough or consistent enough”.
Mr Littleproud pointed out that with a population of 27 million people, Australia produces enough food and fibre for around 90 million people “so we do actually need to trade”.
