The mounting pressure on the Federal Government to scrap the proposed biosecurity tax continues to build as Grain Producers Australia and other industry groups make submissions and statements to the Senate Inquiry into the legislation.
A Farm Online article has highlighted staunch opposition from GPA and misgivings from Grain Growers regarding consultation, the functionality of allocating collected funds and ignorance of existing biosecurity levy processes already contributed to by grain producers.
New modelling shows the grains industry will be the single largest contributor by commodity to the new tax, with GPA saying department figures showed levies of $12.25 million out of a proposed total $51.8 million to be raised by the biosecurity tax would come from the grains sector.
GPA chair Barry Large said this would represent a ten-fold increase in biosecurity levies for grain growers - without the certainty of knowing the money was definitely going towards the biosecurity effort.
"The current levies are established by growers themselves and kept for specific purposes," Mr Large said.
"But this new levy or tax as we call it will be taken directly off growers' incomes - and then redistributed into consolidated government revenue - without any consideration of their actual production costs and risks."
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