Total unity not realistic or necessary leaders tell Making Our Voices Heard

"The essentials are strong leadership and the mob behind you," the Australian Live Export Council chair and former Federal Agriculture Minister said.

"That means leading the mob, not kowtowing into the lowest common denominator and not trying to necessarily get a total consensus but to argue out the case that you think has got most going for it."

Speaking of his experience as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Mr Crean said that, although unity was important, total unity was unrealistic.

"If we didn't get unanimity, isolate the recalcitrants," he said.

"It's easier to isolate them if you've got fewer of them - stands to reason - but that was an effective tool."

Dealing with a range of positions from within the membership was a reality for the National Farmers' Federation (NFF), president Fiona Simson said.

And, while NFF's state farming organisation members might not always share the national body's policies, she said effective advocacy was still possible.

The key was to create shared understanding of the situation before working to develop a common direction.

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"We need to concentrate on bringing people into the room, on building trust within that room, and then finding that there actually are some commonalities and some shared outcomes in that room ... sometimes our members' policies differ slightly from the NFF's position but that's absolutely fine," she said.

"What we need is the single position that we can prosecute in Canberra."

READ MORE: Trust not structure vital says Simson

Speaking from the Making Our Voices Heard audience, Gippsland dairy farmer Bernard Lubitz said unity under the NFF had to be addressed.

"We have to decide - are we going to give away our individual identities and work with the NFF and trust each other?" Mr Lubitz asked.

"Or are we going to finish with the NFF and focus on our individual commodities?"

In response, Australian Dairy Farmers chief executive David Inall said it would remain part of the NFF.

"There's no suggestion that dairy is going it alone," he said.

"Dairy is a proud member of NFF."

Mr Inall said NFF's role was to deal with cross-commodity issues such as drought, telecommunications, tax and industrial relations and had resources to manage them.

"I think every industry should proudly understand and prosecute its own specific policy initiatives that are relevant to each sector and NFF would expect us to do that," he said.

"They don't want to get into the minutiae of our industry."

Well-established bodies with staff and constitutions had an advantage over newer or single-issue groups.

"Other groups start up for for their own reason, and I don't criticise that, but the groups get going and they try and make change from outside," Mr Inall said.

"It's very difficult; the harsh reality is that if the prime minister or the minister for agriculture, the minister for trade, needs to do something very fast and wants to talk to an organisation, they will talk to those people who can very quickly get a network going and can come back with some type of cogent response.

"I've lived through an exotic disease incident when the chief vet of the United States rings and says 'We need to talk to you', they need to talk to an organisation that can very quickly [respond].

"In our case, we got 300 people on the telephone in an hour - people from the White House, journalists, everybody - we could do that.

"If you're a smaller group, with all due respect, you probably can't pull that together.

"And the government says, ''Well, we're about to spend a billion dollars, we need to talk to somebody who can help'."

Mr Lubitz said it was time commodity groups took a different approach to leadership.

"You're not going to get change from the grassroots any more," he said.

"We're looking for leadership.

"And until we see leadership that is driving results, I'm disinclined to want to be a member of anything."

Australian Farm Institute chair Andrew Spencer encouraged Mr Lubitz to become involved in the process.

"You mentioned that you're not satisfied with the bodies who could be representing you, so you're not a member of them," Mr Spencer said.

"I'd like to throw another alternative to you, if you're not satisfied with the bodies, you could be a member, join up and have you say and change them from within - as Fiona [Simson] was saying, that's really what we need in Australian agriculture."

Nuffield scholar and dairy farmer Daniel Meade said grassroots engagement was critical to any industry body.

"An iceberg is nothing without its base so grassroots is where it all starts," Mr Meade said.

"Grassroots branches need to be maintained and encouraged because that's often the first entry point for ag advocacy.

"People go there because they've got local issues.

"They know someone who's there, they often know the local or they should know the local leader, they have the opportunity to have a direct input.

"So for people to become engaged, they must be confident that their opinions will be heard and listened to and appreciated."