Insight into future of Australia's wheat exports

March 16, 2007

The leading grains market analyst Malcolm Bartholomaeus will share his insight into the future of the Australian wheat export market during a public lecture at the University of New England next week.

With the Australian Government now deciding on a way forward for wheat exports, Mr Bartholomaeus, the Managing Director of the market consultancy business Callum Downs Commodity News, will present his own vision of the road to deregulation.

Mr Bartholomaeus, who holds a Master of Economics degree from UNE, will be returning to the University to deliver the 2007 Jack Makeham Memorial Lecture on Thursday 22 March. The lecture, titled "Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff: Unravelling an Export Institution", will be in UNE's Lewis Seminar Room at 4 pm.

Referring to last year's Cole Inquiry into the Australian Wheat Board's transactions in Iraq, he said: "The reality is that, even without the scandal uncovered in the Cole Inquiry, the single desk system was about to fail. It was failing primarily because, as a cooperative system, some of its beneficiaries were no longer paying the costs of achieving its benefits. It had also become an unsustainably high-cost system and, in a deregulated economic environment in a global economy, growers were still being insulated from proper price signals, and were all being forced to take the same average price. This is untenable when, elsewhere in their business activities, they are exposed to the full forces of economic and financial deregulation."

Mr Bartholomaeus is involved in the debate about restructuring the wheat export system in time for the 2007 harvest. "The Government will decide on an appropriate way forward between now and the end of April," he said, "keeping in mind that there is a review of wheat exporting arrangements due under National Competition Policy guidelines in 2010, and that World Trade Organisation agreements in place suggest that single desk marketing arrangements may need to be phased out by 2013.

"My view is that we proceed forward for the next three years with a new single desk system that is much lower-cost, has the costs borne by all wheat growers, and maximises competition in providing marketing services to growers right up to the point of export sale. Once this new competitive environment is in place, the step to full deregulation becomes an easier one."

The Agribusiness Division of the National Australia Bank is partly funding Mr Bartholomaeus's visit to UNE, and other sponsorship has come from the Armidale branch of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society and the School of Economics at UNE.

The annual Jack Makeham Memorial Lecture honours an influential lecturer in farm management at UNE who is still remembered with affection and respect by those who studied under him during several decades. Mr Bartholomaeus tutored some of Jack Makeham's students while studying for his Master's degree.

For more information on the lecture, contact Dr Maxine Darnell, in UNE's School of Economics, on (02) 6773 3595.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at March 16, 2007 05:38 PM