ACT Milk Authority

By the late 1960s the Canberra dairy industry again faced criticism over quality, pricing, distribution, and supply. 

To combat this, the federal government formed the ACT Milk Authority in 1971, giving it economic control of the local dairy industry and making it solely responsible for the regulation and control of supply, sale, price, and distribution of milk in the ACT. An enquiry in 1974 recommended that Dairy Farmers be the sole processor and Bega the sole wholesale distributor. It was during this period that Canberra Milk first started appearing on the supermarket shelves and front porches around Canberra.

The Authority worked well for decades, but by the late 1990s concern over the legality of the government-controlled monopoly of the milk industry and changes in the national milk market led to the deregulation of the ACT milk industry, and the Authority was disbanded on 1 July 2000.