HISTORIC FIRST: WINEMAKERS FEDERATION UNITES WINE INDUSTRY

by Dudley Brown

In a thrilling and concise “8 Point Plan” the Winemakers Federation of Australia claims to have united the famously fractious wine industry around the proposition that other people should pay to fix WFA’s 20+ year run of disastrous policy ideas by creating a “demand led recovery.”

Among the key points to achieve their vision is to ‘keep the WET rebate (a 100% tax break on alcohol tax for most producers) for branded wine because it continues to deliver on the original policy intent’ while simultaneously ignoring the actual original policy of only benefitting the smallest wineries.

In another crazy brave act of thought leadership, WFA also proposed to nullify an international treaty by keeping foreigners (Kiwis this time) from accessing the WET Rebate scheme despite them doing so legally and calling it a “level playing field” idea (despite its tilt).

WFA also announced that they have agreed that a federal government sanctioned body – the marketing friendly named AGWA – should receive $40+ million dollars in to ‘grow export demand’ for Australian wine despite AGWA overseeing 10 years of steadily declining international market share and falling prices paid or Australian wine in overseas markets.

Most importantly, the WFA proposes that nothing at all should change for their members in order to fix the Australian wine industry “before the 2016 vintage” aside from winemakers receiving a new tax break to encourage industry “consolidation.”

In a historic demonstration of industry unity, WFA also obtained the support of the national grape growing organization WGGA behind the proposition that WGGA’s grape grower members should lose all WET rebate tax benefits for making unbranded “bulk” wine and cleanskins from their grapes and selling it to companies such as industry duopolists (duopsonists for the pedantic reader) Coles and Woolworths.

The WGGA, headed by former long time Wine Australia employee Lawrie Stanford, did not answer TheWineRules questions in writing when asked about WGGA accepting financial sponsorship from key bulk wine buyer Woolworths.

When questioned why WFA didn’t propose a different tax system to discourage production of oversupplied low value wine and laws to protect consumers from otherwise regulated and dangerous substances like wine with no labels, WFA CEO Paul Evans replied: “politics is the art of the possible.”

In other politics news, the federal government has set up its own group to look into taxation arrangements in the wine industry in spite of the 8 Point Plan. Meanwhile, it can be reported that there has been generational grumbling that the top secret VOMIT (Very Old Men In Tweed) organization is “running things”.

Exclusive photo of VOMIT Leadership Meeting