Australian Dairy Farmers in chaos: Eight Victorian councillors ousted

The Australia Dairy Farmers peak lobby group is in chaos, after eight of its Victorian councillors were ousted in the lead-up to its annual general meeting today.

ADF has been forced to postpone the election of a new national president until Friday, but it’s unlikely the eight Victorian councillors will be replaced in time.

United Dairyfarmers of Victoria president Bernie Free, who was only confirmed in the role on Monday, led the push to oust eight of his own state’s ADF councillors, notifying them via email on Wednesday that their positions had been “revoked”.

“Most of them had a conflict of interest, so we decided, with advice from the VFF president (Emma Germano), that we remove them all,” Mr Free said.

He said that “conflict was in being Dairy Farmers Victoria members”, plus “most of them had already served their two year terms”.

But former UDV president Mark Billing, who spearheaded the formation of DFV as a new state lobby group, said he and the other councillors were still “UDV members and are all ADF business members”.

“(Fellow ADF councillor) Bruce Knowles and I went through an election to represent the south west (on ADF national council),” Mr Billing said. “We were all democratically appointed, but summarily dismissed.”

As for their terms being up, Mr Billing said that was not the case for two of the ousted councillors and that ultimately UDV had the discretion to vary terms.

Mr Billing said Victorian dairy farmer representation on ADF was already under scrutiny, given the Victorian Farmers Federation had not paid any subscriptions to the peak dairy lobby for more than 12 months.

The loss of eight Victorian ADF councillors leaves the ADF council with just seven from other dairying states.

Peter Hunt, The Weekly Times, 23 November 2023.

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