WA's socialist potatoes

In reality, consumers pay more overall. Prices are adjusted to discourage imports from other states, but do not fluctuate to reflect local supply and demand. When there is an oversupply in the other states, prices fall and consumption rises. Not in WA – prices there are designed to keep growers in business through orderly marketing.

Indeed, orderly marketing was once the justification for all kinds of schemes aimed at protecting farmers from competition. But times have changed. Apart from rice growers in NSW, who are subject to a monopoly export desk and licensed domestic buyers, as far as I know WA potato growers are the only Australian farmers who cannot freely sell their crop.

And just to confirm how much times have changed, the Labor opposition in WA has announced a policy of repealing the Marketing of Potatoes Act, pointing out that it is out-dated and excessively bureaucratic. The Liberal government, traditionally the party of free enterprise, says it does not intend to alter the status quo.

In NSW a review of the rice marketing legislation recommending retention of the rice single desk has apparently been accepted by the new Liberal government. If NSW Labor promises deregulation, socialism might never be the same again.