Dairy Australia 2024 AGM: Farmers vent frustration over remuneration

A pending vote to raise Dairy Australia board members’ pay by a cumulative $100,000 has farmers seeing red. Here’s why.

Farmer opposition is growing over a move to raise Dairy Australia board members’ pay by a cumulative $100,000.

United Dairyfarmers Victoria has officially opposed the proposed increase in remuneration for non-executive directors on the DA board, from an aggregate of $490,000 to $590,000 per year.

The six-figure hike will be put to a vote at DA’s annual general meeting on November 27 in Warrnambool.

Outgoing Dairy Australia chairman James Mann.

The vote will coincide with the chairman position switching from Mount Gambier region farmer James Mann to Queensland’s Paul Roderick.

“Farmers have got all these rising costs yet Dairy Australia is voting for a nice pay rise. Once again, they’re failing to read the room,” UDV president Bernie Free said.

“Dairy farmers are working harder than ever to make ends meet and they’re the ones paying for Dairy Australia because the processors sure aren’t.”

The UDV will also vote to remove the Australia Dairy Processors Federation as a Class B shareholder of DA at the meeting, due to its lack of substantive financial contributions in recent years.

eastAUSmilk president Joe Bradley said the prospective payrise and the lack of ADPF contributions to DA fed into the view that farmers were seen as a cash cow by administrators.

“Dairy farmers feel like Dairy Australia is taking us for a free ride. We’re the ones up at dawn, working long hours and then you’ve got these directors turning around and saying they deserve a $100,000 payrise,” the Brisbane region farmer said.

“The processors aren’t putting a penny towards this joyride — farmers are the ones paying for them to have a good time.”

A DA spokeswoman said: “The proposed increase creates a new cap on the funding available for directors’ fees for the next 5-plus years.

“The cap was last increased back in 2020. Any potential increase in directors’ fees enables Dairy Australia to attract high-quality directors, covers additional contributions expected of directors, and also other factors such as increases in compulsory super contributions and inflation.”

Dairy Australia remuneration has been the subject of controversy on several occasions in recent years, most notably in 2019, when it was revealed $10,000 was spent on an in-house coffee machine.

In May 2019, outgoing DA managing director Ian Halliday made headlines after confirmation he was paid $773,375 for his 2018 work, including $312,000 in bonuses, more than three times the performance-based remuneration he received only four years before in 2015.