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Ogilvie rejects Maconochie criticism of Cattle Council

Beef Central 09/11/2012

Cattle Council of Australia president Andrew Ogilvie has hit back at criticism levelled at the organisation’s restructure process by former Australian Lot Feeders Association president Sandy Maconochie, describing the Victorian cattleman’s recent broadside as a “negative, provocative and ill-informed rant”.

Mr Maconochie told Beef Central last week that he believed that the Cattle Council of Australia’s push to access transaction levy funds was “immoral” and an easy option that did not address the fundamental reasons for Cattle Council’s funding issues.

In broad-ranging criticisms Mr Maconochie said he also believed CCA had entered the industry consultation process with a pre-conceived plan to access levies regardless of the outcome; and suggested council directors were clinging to power and saw CCA sitting fees as a source of off-farm income. He also suggested that existing structure of the Australian Lot Feeders Association, which is based on a directly-elected national board and funding by corporate sponsorships and membership fees, would serve as the most appropriate model for the CCA restructure.

In an interview with Beef Central this week Mr Ogilvie said he believed Cattle Council had been very successful in bringing wide and disparate sectors of the industry together in recent months to create “a positive and informative debate and unity of purpose” to shape the future of national grassfed cattle industry representation and funding.

He said Cattle Council had been willing to have an open debate around industry structures and funding, and hoped to arrive at a point that “satisfies most people”.

“And I was really disappointed that Sandy came out and engaged in a negative, provocative and in lots of cases ill-informed rant about Cattle Council’s restructure and funding consultation.

“The thing that really upset me the most was that he managed to insult the integrity of many hard working Cattle Councillors and State Farming representatives who have really contributed strongly over many years with their time and expertise to advance our industry.

“SFOs and their members have carried the responsibility of industry representation and it is often a thankless task, and I think it is time a few other people put their hands up to help, and that is what our process is trying to achieve.”

Dealing with each criticism individually, Mr Ogilvie made the following points:

Sitting fees: “Cattle Councillors get paid a per diem for every meeting, and out of that they have to pay their own cost of accommodation and meals, and travel expenses are paid on presentation of receipts.

“No one in their wildest dreams could say it was a source of off-farm income. Councillors spend  many hours outside of meeting times with the help of their State Farming Organisation committees, informing themselves about policy development, and I can tell you from experience, that they all dip into their own pockets to cover that shortfall.

“By the time you have paid for your accommodation and meals there is a very little left in your allowance, notwithstanding the fact that Cattle Councillors often have to employ labour while they are away from home.

“You would have to have a pretty miserable farm income if that was a source of off-farm income.”

Mr Ogilvie said meeting payments varied depending on whether councillors were meeting in an urban or regional centre, but were typically in the vicinity of around $220 per day.

ALFA structure provides best model: “The Australian Lot Feeders Association represents a fairly small and specialised group of people, and it does it very well.

“It looks after its members really well, but I think it is very simplistic, and possibly disingenuous of Mr Maconochie to suggest that this model is the best one to represent producers in an industry as large and diverse as the grassfed industry.

“We have so many different groups within our industry compared to lot feeders,it is simply not possible to expect that a solution that works for one sector would automatically suit a totally different sector.”

Cattle Council is ‘doomed financially’: “I can tell you right now that Cattle Council is not doomed financially.

“What we’re trying to do is address the funding shortfall that producers identified during our consultation that they said was an impediment to developing good policy for our industry.

“The fact is that CCA has always done most of the heavy lifting on big industry issues, particularly in terms of being the public face and media voice on many issues. There is always the expectation that Cattle Council will take the lead, or at the very least be heavily involved, in industry issues, even when the issue is not just one for grass fed levy payers.

“If you cast your mind back to any big industry issue, CCA is out there doing most of the heavy lifting.

“And producers recognise that to do that, you need to be better funded.

“Cattle Council is under financial strain to comprehensively perform its policy development functions, but the rest of the operation is under no financial strain at all, we’ve got money to do what we need to do into the foreseeable future.”

CCA entered restructure process with preconceived ideas: “The idea that we went into the whole exercise with a pre-conceived idea and were not going to listen to anything that we had been told is incorrect.

“I think our consultation process has been the most expansive and inclusive and  costly of any process that a peak council has engaged in.

“If we have a pre-conceived idea, we certainly would not have gone down the track of spending so much money and time to come up with an idea that we already had, we would have just implemented that and said stuff you to the rest of the industry.”

No time for public battles: “We think it is not the time for public battles within the industry.. what we have been trying to do and we’ve done it very well in my opinion is bringing together the divergent views and welded them into a fairly united unity of purpose as to the way we want to go forward.”

Restructure process update

The full board of Cattle Council of Australia meets in Fremantle next week for the association’s annual general meeting.

Mr Ogilvie said one key item on the agenda will be to progress the restructure process.

“There are things that everyone who has been consulted has agreed to and there are a few things that still aren’t agreed to.

“The board will try and go through those and try and line up as much common ground as we’ve got, and then try and deal with the two or three issues that haven’t been agreed to so far, and see if we can come up with a preferred conceptual model.

“I can’t pre-empt the board’s decision or give any indication of where it’s going to land.”

However he did say that the Government representatives have expressed “a certain level of discomfort” about the concept of Cattle Council accessing a portion of the levy.

“So we will need to do a fair bit of work on that if that is to be achieved,” he said.

“That is not the only source of funding we’re looking at, we’re looking at other sources as well.

“The crux of a good structure is that it is well-funded and that is going to require a considerable amount of work. It is not a done deal.”

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