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ACROSS THE DITCH The price IS RIGHT? G BY JOHN MOSIG 'day Kiwi. I hope you enjoyed catching the Baggy Greens on the hop down in Tassy. Not sure what happened there. We truly had our pants pulled down. And I hope the plumb pudd and the turkey have settled. You had seafood too, did you? And why not, it's our own product from our own industry, eh? We put a lot of effort into growing it for the market. Complying with food safety standards not because we have to, but because we take pride in our product and make sure everyone who helps it along the way gets their fair share. After all, money's made round to go around. Not any more it's not. Not over here, at least. According to the supermarket giants – you whistle and I'll point - the bucks are supposed to stop with them. And who misses out? You guessed it, the hard done by Aussie farmer. We can buy Chinese "whiting" and catfi sh from the Mekong Delta at prices that delight the budget-conscious mum with a nest of gaping mouths to fi ll. There's "barramundi" from the Rift Valley and South East Asia, too. All thawed for our convenience, of course. What lovely, thoughtful people they are at those supermarkets. I didn't know there was a country called South East Asia, but there you go. Every day's a school day. It goes further than that. With the buying power of the Mighty Aussie Dollar – that's right, the same one we used to call the Little Aussie Battler - fruit and veges are coming in from offshore by the shipload and dairy produce, too. Home brand groceries are pushing the old, familiar lines off the shelves. They're packaged in Oz, of course, but who knows where and under what conditions the contents were actually produced? For those who came in late, Coles was part of the Coles Myer break-up, or more accurately, breakdown. The two iconic retail giants, along with their acquired liquor and assorted retail chains, weren't travelling all that well and in the sell-off, the Westfarmers conglomerate picked up Coles' Once an investment has been made at this level, the supermarket chains tend to have you by the short and curlies All dressed up and nowhere to go. Victorian avocados on the packing conveyor associated outlets. You have Bunnings on your side of The Ditch, so you'll know the sort of people Westfarmers are and why they fancied they could return the Coles supermarket brand to profi t. Anyway, they've declared a marketing war on their arch-rival, Woolworths, and it's on for young and old over here. Is this happening on your side, too? As mentioned above, it's the farmers who miss out, and the grocery manufacturers and the newly arrived unskilled refugees looking for those two shifts to put a deposit on a house and get set up in the Promised Land. Every now and then some polly, prodded no doubt by his beleaguered constituents, has a burst of outrage on air or in the press, but at Party Central the powers that be, who want to keep on being, know keeping the cost of living down to the 85 percent who don't farm far outweigh the votes of those who do. Never mind national food security, they'll be gone by then, with their CPI-indexed pensions and gold travel passes. Then there's the small matter of a carbon tax. As the previous incumbent of The Lodge told us in his short-lived stay, "Global warming is the biggest moral issue of our time." You get a bit of that over there from Wellington? Anyway, with the Greens holding the minority Gillard government gently but fi rmly in their squirrel grip, we now have a carbon tax. Presumably this tax is to encourage consumers to become carbon output- conscious by applying pressure to the hip pocket nerve. So shouldn't the food brought in from unenlightened jurisdictions – read un-carbon taxed countries – have a carbon duty placed on it? And the carbon element involved in the shipping? We're not holding our breath over that one, either. The whole thing makes my blood run cold, in much the same way when you realise the light at the end of the tunnel is actually the Wairarapa Connection entering the tunnel from the other end. I don't want you to think I'm having a go at you or anything, but I got a call from a Murray cod farmer from up in the Sunraysia district the other day. He also happens to be one of the country's largest avocado growers. He's just lost his supermarket chain contract. Avocados shipped from New Zealand are going under the hammer for A$3-5 per tray. That's kanga dollars, of course, but it still has to be well under the cost of production up at Kerikeri. I told him to stop his whinging. He knew he was going to get screwed the day he slipped into the gummies and slung his shovel across his shoulder. By the way, there's a story going around that the greatest form of child abuse is to leave the farm to your children. Here comes the nurse with my medication. Gotta go now. 12 ■ NZ AQUACULTURE ■ MARCH/APRIL 2012