Paper Petition

The Petition of residents of the State of Queensland draws to the attention of the House The current state of the sugar industry is caused by the corrupt nature of the world sugar prices, and adverse weather and disease impacts on the crop. This situation, outside the control of the industry, has resulted in four straight years of minimal farm income and a direct loss to the Mackay Region economy of more than $200 million since 1998.

Your petitioners therefore request the House to work with the Sugar Industry to address issues of best practice, modernisation, training, employment and cost efficiency, in a whole of government, whole of community fashion. In making this call we wish to create a clear constructive focus on returning the industry to a profitable state. We see that the keys to implementing action towards this goal are innovative solutions to training and employment, programmed acceleration of best practice adoption, a focus on reducing cost of production to meet the new paradigm in world sugar price and research programs designed to explore product variety and value added uses for the crop. We look for a clear statements from Federal and State Governments acknowledging that the sugar industry is an extremely important contributor to the economic health of regional Queensland and is economically and environmentally sustainable in the long term.