The government has responded to months of protests from the agriculture sector by announcing alterations to its contentious Biosecurity Protection Levy "to ensure it's more equitable and more transparent."
It announced on Tuesday that the BPL will now be set according to "an industry's average share of gross agriculture, fisheries and forestry production over a rolling three-year period."
Grain Producers Australia chief executive Colin Bettles said the organisation welcomed the adjustments that addressed "some of the many inequities raised by farmers and their representative groups and lack of transparency."
"However, we need to see the actual detail of these changes to know whether these modifications have actually improved fairness and addressed the significant, fundamental flaws in this proposal," he said
He said GPA remained concerned that agricultural producers were labelled 'beneficiaries' of biosecurity, "when we know there are many beneficiaries of strong biosecurity, from the paddock through to the supermarket checkout."
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