By Ben Bennett – President, Australian Dairy Farmers
When I’m not travelling on ADF business, I spend my days on a dairy farm and like most farmers I assess things against a simple measure – does it make our industry stronger, more competitive, and more secure into the future?
As I sit down to write this piece, the full details of the agreement have not yet been made public, but I cannot see how it will benefit our industry in any of those ways.
Dairy farmers backed the idea of a deal with Europe. We understood the opportunity.
It’s one of the most protected markets in the world, and if we could get fair access, there was real upside for Australian dairy.
But that was always the condition. It had to be fair, and it had to be reciprocal.
What’s been delivered doesn’t meet that test.
Australia walked away from a deal in Osaka in 2023 because it didn’t stack up.
What’s on the table now doesn’t materially improve on that position. After eight years of negotiations, farmers were expecting something better; not the same deal dressed up differently.
On paper, there’s tariff reductions into Europe, and that sounds positive. But when you dig into it, the reality is those opportunities are still heavily constrained.
The quotas are small, and outside those quotas the tariffs remain so high they effectively shut the door.
So, for most Australian dairy farmers, access to Europe doesn’t change in any meaningful way.
At the same time, Australia is opening its doors, removing tariffs on key products like cheese over just three years.
That’s not a level playing field.
European farmers are supported by tens of billions of euros in subsidies every year.
On average, those subsidies make up a significant portion of farm income. That support shapes how much they produce, what they export, and at what price.
Australian farmers don’t have that.
So what we’re doing here is exposing one of the least subsidised industries in the world to one of the most supported, without getting equal opportunity in return.
That’s not free trade. That’s uneven competition.
Then there’s geographical indications, something farmers have been raising concerns about from the start.
Australia has agreed to protect nearly 400 European product names. Yes, we’ve held onto ‘parmesan’, and existing users of terms like feta and gruyere will be able to continue.
But the direction is clear, future Australian producers will be restricted in how they describe their products.
That creates cost, complexity, and confusion.
For farmers, it’s another example of giving something up without getting enough back.
One of the biggest concerns for me is what this means for our domestic industry.
Cheese is a cornerstone of Australian dairy processing. It supports regional jobs, investment, and ultimately farmgate milk prices.
The tariff on cheese imports has been one of the last meaningful protections we’ve had. This deal removes it.
We’re already seeing strong growth in imports from Europe. They now send us significantly more dairy than we send back, both in value and volume. This agreement risks accelerating that trend.
And once that happens, once processing capacity shrinks and supply chains shift, it’s very hard to rebuild.
There are safeguard provisions in the deal, but they rely on proving serious harm after it’s already happened. For a perishable product like milk, that’s too late.
Farmers can’t turn production on and off overnight. You don’t recover lost capacity quickly.
That’s why dairy farmers are deeply disappointed.
This deal delivers cheaper luxury cars into Australia, but it doesn’t deliver meaningful new opportunities for the people producing one of the country’s most important staple foods.
Where to from here?
If this agreement is going ahead, we need to make sure Australian dairy isn’t left carrying the cost.
We need stronger support for domestic demand, backing Australian product on Australian shelves.
We need better monitoring of imports and pricing behaviour. And we need to make sure trade policy and domestic policy are working together, not against each other.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t just about trade deals.
It’s about making sure Australia can keep producing its own food, supporting regional communities, and backing the farmers who do it.
On that measure, this deal doesn’t go far enough.