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 petitions 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.