Chris Cummins - Breakout River Meats

Chris Cummins
Managing Director
Breakout River Meats - Cowra

There are too many government caused cost increases in this country. It doesn’t matter where you look, you are being skinned by bad policy, dumb decisions and a belief that Co2 causes the planet to warm. It is not true, the science is not settled, to contrary, the argument against Global Warming is compelling.

Politicians need to do some homework and stop running the rhetoric of the globalist UN elite who are looking for a one world government and the transfer of wealth from developed countries to underdeveloped countries.

We have so many failed policies in this country. No gas reservation policy, no plans to keep the lights on in the future, lack of water infrastructure, lack of logistical infrastructure, failed immigration policies and we now have nearly the highest wages and energy costs in the world. We should have cheap energy but we’ve thrown that advantage away.

We have all these free trade agreements that have destroyed our manufacturing including food manufacturing because on a world stage, we can’t compete. You can have dear energy or high wages, but you can’t have both. When you have a look at politicians in this country, I can honestly say I’ve never observed a more useless collection of people in all my time, they are basically pathetic, self-serving, clueless to reality and unemployable rabble.

There are a few standouts that we are lucky to have, but they normally get ground out by the media or the other useless politicians. Take Turnbull and Shorten as an example, have you ever observed two bigger country destroying clowns in your life? Then we have the Liberal Party making it unwinnable for a sitting senator, Jim Molan.

This great country Australia should be an economic powerhouse, but instead, we are well on the road to self-destruction and the consequences of a decade of terrible policies have us on a freight train that’s going over the cliff. We will run out of power, we will run out of fuel, we will eat food from places like China with no other option, we will import everything, we will keep racking up our debt that we can’t pay off and our politicians that caused it all will still be retired on the taxpayer gravy train and couldn’t care less. We have spent more time debating who can marry who instead of trying to fix our major problems. This fact alone shows how shallow our representatives in governments across the country really are.

It's time people in this country started to wake up to the reality that we are all being stolen off, our children and grandchildren are being stolen off, and Australia couldn’t have been more mismanaged than what’s it’s been. The consequences of this will become clearer as we lose jobs, businesses close, our debt rises and our standard of living diminishes at an ever increasing pace. The only thing I have faith in is agriculture, but try to keep your debt to a minimum, because there are no new ways to go broke, it’s only ever been too much debt.

Below is an example of what I’m talking about with an email I sent to The Hon. Dominic Perrottet NSW Treasurer this week about the NSW Government Fire Services Levy. It hits business like processors hard because of our high cost of insurance.

Merry Christmas to everyone and I thank David Nolan for letting me have a rant and let out my frustrations and not have to write something warm and fuzzy.

Kind Regards,

Chris Cummins

EMAIL TO: The Hon. Dominic Perrottet NSW Treasurer

Dear Dominic,

I am a meat processor at Cowra NSW. We employ about 200 local people, so just a smaller processor compared to some of the big plants in Australia. We are a family business and we are woven into the economic fabric of Cowra. 

My concern to you is the NSW Fire Services levy that is around 30% of our insurance cost. For this current contract that equates to about $250,000 of our insurance cost. Queensland and Victoria don't have the same cost burden as we do in NSW. Because our premiums are rising greatly next year the Levy will be about $600,000. Why do we have this impost on business and is there any moves to rectify this burden on business? Given that our gas and electricity costs have already gone up about $1.2m a year, we are considering the fact of whether we stay in business or not, governments are making it too hard to run a business. Payroll tax, stamp duty and we pay about $750k a month in GST on livestock purchases that we don't get back on meat sales. So I fund that until the ATO refunds the GST. The cost burden increases are relentless, the litigation is relentless, the red tape is relentless, the lack of understanding by government departments is relentless, but this Fire Levy seems to be a unintended slap in the face by government. 

I had two and a half years fighting the OSR about company grouping and payroll tax. I eventually won the argument but at great cost to me, physically, mentally and monetary. They then had another crack at me 12 months later, I won again but I can tell you it has made me bitter towards government and politicians who beat their chest at the great job they are doing. When you sit where I'm sitting, the reality is very different. I talk to a lot of people in business and they all say the same thing, it's getting too hard to run a business. This fire levy issue will be discussed in AMIC (Australian Meat Industry Council) and will be put in front of the NSW Government in the near future. 

I’m also spending a fortune on back-up power generation at the plant and at home because we will run out of power, it’s a certainty. Here I am in 2018 planning like it’s 1932. I’m also bumping up our fuel storage another 100,000 litres because one day, we will run out of fuel. The once lucky country is not so lucky anymore, we will import all our food, our steel, aluminium, cars, machinery and everything in between and think this is very sad with dire consequences for our way of life and standard of living.

Thank you for your time 'if' you read this. I think it's time everyone read Atlas Shrugged' By Ayn Rand to get a picture of exactly where we are at in this country.