Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to give a perspective from the coalition members of this committee. Those members were: Mr Alby Schultz, the member for Hume; Mr Rowan Ramsey, the member for Grey, who is here beside me; Mr George Christensen, the member for Dawson, and me. We issued a dissenting report and I would like to briefly summarise why. As we saw it, the bill as drafted provides a substantial increase in regulatory burden and costs that will have a negative impact on the industry without significantly improving the efficiency of regulation and the re-registration process will slow down, rather than increase, the review of suspect chemicals. Of particular note, we were extremely concerned that there was not a proper cost benefit analysis done on the financial impact that this could have on the industry. We would call on the government to do this cost benefit analysis properly so that we have a real idea of the impact and red tape burden that this will have on industry. We have two recommendations, which we have put in our dissenting report: remove the re-registration process from the bill and set up a troika taskforce of industry, the department and the APVMA to urgently evaluate and improve the internal systems of the APVMA to increase its efficiency, effectiveness and the speed of review of at risk chemicals.

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