Code of Conduct - first birthday 

The Mandatory Horticulture Code of Conduct is one year old this week. I haven’t heard of any birthday parties, and nobody appears to be lining up to sing the praises of what has been achieved by having the code in place.

Of course, we can refer in general terms to the benefits of having documented terms of trade and a dispute resolution framework as required under the code.

However, these issues were never in debate and in fact have been strongly supported by both Brismark and BML over many years.

The devil remains in the detail and it is this area where the Code imposes its distortionary and anti-competitive impact on the industry.

What has been achieved by having the Code in place is hard to determine as no benchmarking data has been released by either the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry or the Mediation Advisor.

The measure of its success cannot be judged by what action the ACCC is currently taking to pursue compliance with a code which has generally been accepted as unworkable.

The real measure of success would be the work being undertaken by the Horticulture Mediation Advisor and the government appointed Produce Assessors to address genuine complaints relating to commercial transactions between growers and wholesalers.

However, the Mediation Advisor has not issued any report to the industry since they were appointed over 12 months ago and feedback from around Australia is that they have been very quiet.

Similarly, the Horticulture Produce Assessors appointed to service the industry across Australia have also been very quiet, with most having done little or no code related work. In fact the overwhelming lack of activity by the Mediation Advisor and Produce Assessors has completely undermined one of the core reasons why the code was introduced.

Recently, there have been a number of media articles regarding action by the ACCC in respect of wholesalers (traders) being investigated for potential breaches of the code.

Efforts to highlight other areas where wholesalers may not have followed industry best practice generally relate to situations where excessive volumes of second-grade produce has been dumped on the Market or where there has been a breakdown in communications.

And so the code remains. A much maligned piece of legislation, borne out of political expediency and introduced despite the strong words of caution expressed by the likes of the Centre for International Economics as well as the fact that the code breached the Federal Government's own red tape reduction guidelines.

Perhaps its second birthday will have seen amendments made which do make it work in the best interests of the industry in promoting good commercial practice.