SPC Ardmona managing director Peter Kelly pointed out that the Australian dollar appreciated more than 50 per cent between 2009 and 2013, enabling a flood of cheap imports and undermining the company's export markets.
In that period SPC Ardmona's share of the Australian canned fruit market plunged and its export market volumes dropped by 90 per cent.
The free-market thinking that has given us the SPC Ardmona decision also gave the world the global financial crisis. Sensible governments can and should intervene in the market, both regulating unacceptable conduct and supporting operations that are in the national interest and viable in the long term.
If the laissez-faire philosophy is allowed to dominate here, it will make Australia globally competitive in a way few would want. We will challenge the Europeans and Americans in the high unemployment and global inequity stakes.
