The unique physical characteristics which made wool so readily marketable twenty years ago are still the same unique physical characteristics, even more marketable today than they were then. Since the Howard government forced a huge cut in production with the reckless price cutting which it employed to dump the last of the stockpile we have not had a sufficient supply of wool to cover the overhead costs of our clients in the trade. With our clients too broke to raise the price to a viable level this problem has continued to get worse.

When in early 2006 the trade was trying to lift the price to a viable level we were hit with ABARE's outrageous price forecast of 673c, which could not have been arrived at by any science above the level of "pin the tail on the donkey". That forecast reversed a solid rising trend in the market, retarding the price recovery by more than six months. In the meantime many producers and their bank managers gave up on wool and joined their ewes to meat breed rams.

The result of this is that again we have bankrupted our clients in the trade by further cutting the supply of Merino wool. After the current round of departures from the trade we will have very few clients left.

This has all come abiout as the result of terrible errors in th management of the marketing since 1989, and especially between 1996 and 2002, topped of by that ABARE forecast in 2006.