Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Customs Amendment (Export Controls and Other Measures) Bill 2011. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Customs Act and the Customs Depot Licensing Charges Act to strengthen the extent of control that Customs has over our export cargo and to ensure consistent depot and warehouse licence conditions.

The coalition is prepared to support this bill. However, we do note that the nature of this bill is contradictory to the government's general approach in many other measures. While this bill increases controls on our exports, at the very same time we have this government weakening controls on our imports, as we have seen with the soft approach on biosecurity where we have seen New Zealand apples being allowed into the country with the potential risk of fire blight. We have also seen the results of the government's soft approach to border protection and border security, with the financial and human disasters that this soft approach has caused and a blowout in costs of $1.7 billion—that is, $1,700 million—that could have been spent in other vitally needed sectors of the economy if it had not been spent on border security because of this government's failed policies.

Therefore you would think that the government would err on the side of caution when it came to fiddling with our long-standing and successful biosecurity arrangements. However, the government are prepared to roll the dice, cross their fingers and hope for the best on biosecurity. But God help them if, by weakening our controls on our borders, we see fire blight take hold in this country. They will be held responsible for decades to come.

So, while the coalition does support this bill, we say that its effects must be very carefully monitored to ensure that it does not tie down our exporters in red tape. For it is our exporters who underwrite our economic prosperity. We should be pinning medals on our exporters' chests, but instead this government's plans are to burden them with a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, placing them at a competitive disadvantage. Therefore, although the coalition supports this bill, we say its effects must be monitored very carefully, especially its effects on small business. Exporting is hard enough. It is a time-critical business. And we cannot have the government burdening exporters with unnecessary red tape, which this bill has the potential to do. In conclusion, the coalition supports this bill. However, we will be monitoring its effects very closely.

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