Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

It would be considered an outrageous thing to hear in this House, but it was actually interesting watching the Senate on Thursday night. When watching the Senate on Thursday night we saw a whole lot of things that I certainly never expected to see. The Liberal Party had indicated through the Leader of the Opposition in this House a number of amendments they were going to move. The key amendment was to remove access provisions across the board that were contained in this legislation. That amendment, notwithstanding having been raised by the Leader of the Opposition in this House as being critical to the amendments that would be moved by the opposition, was never moved. There were a number of amendments moved, though, and, for reasons which will become clear as I speak, the government are in a position to respond positively to each of them.

There was a change to the objects clause in the Wheat Export Marketing Bill 2008 which changed the obligation from being ‘responsive’ to growers to ‘advances’ the needs of growers. We have accepted that. Regarding the review date, there was some discussion where the government suggested to the opposition that it might have made more sense to have a later review date so that there were two harvests, so that the access provisions under this bill were able to be taken into account. If they were able to be taken into account that would make the review more worth while, but the Liberal Party were determined that the start date should be 1 January 2010. In the interests of having a constructive approach in the other place, the amendment was accepted. There was also a particular issue regarding transport and trying to make sure that state governments did not try to impose transport monopolies on the way grain is transported around the country. That amendment was put by the opposition and agreed to.

The bit that got really interesting, though, was an amendment about individuals. This was raised by the Liberal Party and was that any individual grower should be able to export their own wheat without any regulation on them whatsoever. You could describe this amendment as being the total deregulation of the wheat industry. The National Party voted for it. In the Senate on Thursday night the Liberal Party put an amendment forward that amounted to the total deregulation of the wheat industry—not moving from having a single desk to having the regulated but competitive system that the government is proposing but actually allowing every single grower the right to export their own wheat wherever they want and in whatever quantity they want, completely outside any international pool. The government was opposed to that amendment. We supported the system that we put forward. The Liberal Party put forward a system of total deregulation and the National Party on Thursday night voted for it.

Interestingly, when you go to the reasons they gave, the most telling comment came after Senator Minchin had described the fact that he believed this bill would be unacceptable to the government and said:

So I suspect we will be talking about this bill once more next week ...

To that, Senator Joyce said:

I understand completely the tactics.

What would possess the National Party to decide on Thursday night that they would support the total deregulation of the wheat industry?

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