Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett has railed against the rising cost of manufacturing and doing business in Australia, warning that some companies “will not make it through this period”.

Jeff Kennet speaking at the 2024 Global Food Forum in Brisbane. Picture: Glen Hunt / The Australian

Speaking at The Australian’s Global Food Forum, Mr Kennett, who is a company director and chairs Victorian manufacturer The Original Juice Company, said energy and labour costs for businesses converting agricultural products into food “are through the roof”.

Earlier this year several of the world’s largest food manufacturers including Mars Australia, Nestle and PepsiCo called out Australia as one of the highest cost based countries in the world to undertake manufacturing.

Mr Kennett said that rather than demonise supermarkets which provided employment for hundreds of thousands of people, politicians should focusing on the things they can manage “such as security of water”.

“We heard the minister (Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt) talk before.

“With due respect we have no national plan for agriculture in this country.

“We might be doing it in bits and pieces, but we have no national plan.

“I’m seeing as part of the food industry huge costs and it worries me tremendously that a lot of those who are in the smaller end of the manufacturing, are not going to get through this period, the cost is too great.”

He said the “greatest regret in my life” was that despite partnering with businessman Anthony Pratt in the 1990s to argue for a national water plan and a national agriculture plan, “nothing had happened”.

“We have wasted decades when in fact when we should be aiming to feed a billion of those who live to our immediate north.

“There is four billion people (on the Asian continent) and we should set a stake in the ground so that the public understands we’re going to give agriculture the profile that it doesn’t have universally.

“It is alright for us to talk to each other but in terms of the Australian public, they don’t see agriculture as a top priority.”

Mr Kennett also lashed out at the Federal Government’s rejection of nuclear power, saying it had to be part of the energy mix in order to provide energy at a reasonable cost for manufacturers and farmers.

“We’re not going to survive on wind and sun alone.

“We desperately need more gas to get us over the short period of time, and nuclear as part of the mix.

“We have got to be thinking to the future.”

The Federal Government was talking about nuclear power plants taking water from agriculture, but there was more to the story.

“We have plenty of water falling on this land, we just don’t use it,” he said.

“We don’t transport it, move it around the country, and we have now got farmers around the Murray River who have lost their water but they are still paying the charges.

“And we’re allowing people to trade water who are not farmers and actually don’t use it.”

Mr Kennett said over regulation was killing incentives in Australia while businesses that were successful and employing hundreds of thousands of Australians were being demonised.

On the same panel, Fred Harrison, CEO of IGA Ritchies which has 80 supermarkets across Eastern Australia, agreed with his fellow panellist that the cost of doing business in Australia has risen significantly.

“We have got to get back the core of the problem, that is that actually costs are too expensive and when we compare ourselves to the rest of the world we’re just not competitive.

“Until we address that we’re ging to lose manufacturing.

“Look at (dairy giant) Fonterra – they’re exiting Australia, why? Because it is far cheaper to produce in New Zealand.”