Last night the annual Bannister Downs Dairy Christmas Party was held, celebrating a momentous year characterised by hard work, innovation, and pride in regional West Australia. The evening brought together the Daubney family, Hancock Prospecting Executive Chairman Mrs Gina Rinehart, and the Bannister Downs team to celebrate both the festive season and one of the most outstanding years in the dairy farm’s history. This year’s event recognised an exceptional awards season, highlighted by Bannister Downs being crowned Grand Champion Dairy Product at the Australian Grand Dairy Awards for its renowned Double Cream. Across every major state and national competition, their dairy products collected an impressive suite of gold and silver medals and Champion titles, reflecting consistent excellence across its fresh milks, creams, and flavoured products.
The celebration also coincided with several major milestones including more than a decade of partnership between the Daubney family and Mrs Gina Rinehart, 20 years of supplying fresh milk to Australian consumers, and 100 years of Daubney family farming. These achievements added special significance to the Christmas gathering, reinforcing the legacy, hard work, and shared values driving Bannister Downs’ continued success. The night was also an opportunity to recognise some of Bannister Downs’ long-serving staff members, such as Tamla Reed, who has just finished up 12 years with Bannister and her outstanding service to the administration, procurement and production teams.
Sue Daubney, company Managing Director, stated “2025 has had a number of challenges, but we are proud to know that we produce several of the nation’s best fresh dairy products. Our industry, both Agricultural and Manufacturing, is feeling the material cost impost of the unnecessary energy crisis, having experienced a 100% cost increase in our electricity bill alone, since November 2024. This is further compounded by cost pass on from all suppliers, example chemicals, bottles, labels, caps, cartons, gas, fuel and all service providers, as they also struggle with their increasing energy (and other) costs. The domino effect.
It is now very urgent that our government permanently depart from net zero and reduce their spending in order to reduce taxes for businesses and individuals and alleviate the current crises in Australia – both cost of living for individuals and families, and cost of production for manufacturing businesses and agriculture enterprises.
Without an immediate change, businesses will continue to close, and farmers will continue to be exiting. We have seen this particularly in dairy with WA having only 99 farmers remaining as at October 2025 (a huge reduction from 2000 when there were more than 430 dairy farming enterprises).
We also see our state herd reduced (down 3,000 cows) and our farm milk supply down 3.8% on prior year. These numbers don’t lie and will continue to decline while conditions are so unfavourable, and electricity prices continue to rise, despite what the government and those benefiting from taxpayers’ money for net zero policies tell us.
I don’t think anyone will enjoy making a choice between spending circa $7 to buy a litre of quality West Australian milk or to buy a cheaper, imported UHT milk with little or no nutritious value. These will be the options, unless we get policies focussed on economic outcomes and what is best for our country
When Australian agriculture wins, we all win! But with record business failures, we don’t win.”
The Christmas Party served as a warm tribute to the people behind Bannister Downs’ success: the farmers, staff, and families whose efforts make these achievements possible. It was an evening of celebration, gratitude, and pride, marking a remarkable year for a very remarkable company.
