"This pledge has been broken with the release this week of draft legislation that dismantles wheat export marketing arrangements," Senator Boswell says.

"The turn around in policy reveals that the Labor Party is hostage to the interests of the powerful multinational grain traders when their first duty should be to working wheat grower families here in Australia."

"Kevin Rudd wrote: `The Australian Labor Party has supported the single desk wheat marketing arrangements for over 65 years since 1939. During that period Labor has been a strong supporter of the current single desk marketing arrangements and it remains Labor policy that the single desk should remain in place while ever these arrangements have support from the growers and the community as well as delivering a benefit to Australian wheat growers'.

"In the February, 2007 letter, the Prime Minister went on to justify why Labor believed in the single desk. He quotes a study by Econtech that found that `the single desk captures a premium of between $15 and $30 a tonne. The total annual value to Australian growers of this premium on Australian premium white is $80 million. On all grades the average premium attributed to the single desk is $13 a tonne and the total annual value of the premium on all grades is $200 million'," Senator Boswell said.

"If the government was really interested in listening to what growers wanted they would listen to the words of wheat growers themselves.

"As the Wheat Export Marketing Alliance put it this week on the release of the draft legislation: `The government has no marketing plan or understanding of how to deal with the inequities and problems that will arise from its legislation.... Managing this rushed transition will be immensely difficult, particularly for wheat growers who are being forced into planning for their future in an information vacuum at the grower level'."

"Kevin 07 curried favour with growers by telling them their single desk would stay. Kevin 08 gets rid of the single desk. How can anybody respect anything he says?"