Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to stand to speak on the Rural Research and Development Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 and the two accompanying bills, the Primary Industries (Excise) Levies Amendment Bill 2013 and the Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Amendment Bill 2013. I am pleased in particular because these bills build on a strong foundation that allows our rural industries to in many ways manage their own future through research and development and innovation. They improve the framework which allows them to cooperate and to address issues in their sector and to help them, through their own actions, to ensure improved profitability and viability into the future.

The member for Forrest talked quite a bit about people who may or may not understand the life and experience of people who live on the land, and in any parliament you will find people who have not lived one life or another. We have maybe a few people in this parliament that have actually lived the life of a parent of a child with a disability. We have a few people that have lived on the land. We have a few people that have been long-haul truck drivers. There are at least two musicians, of which I am one. In any field that we talk about in this place there will be a small number of people with firsthand experience and many others who do not have it.

One of the joys in this bill relates to the approach that Labor governments have taken, because this is actually a Labor government initiative from back in 1989 and is also a Labor initiative now. One of the things that is most impressive about this approach is that it is an arm's length one that allows people who know the sector to make decisions for themselves and then be supported by government. When I was first elected in 2004 I realised very quickly—in fact, I realised this as a candidate and I am sure everyone here has had the same experience—that you meet the best people in this job. Whatever people tell you about our community suffering and about our young people, I know that when you get to be a member of parliament the people that walk in through your door are some of the most extraordinary people around. So you learn very quickly that you would not be the worst member of parliament in the world if all you did was find people who wanted to do good things and helped them. If you did not have a single idea of your own except that one—that when good people who have good ideas and are prepared to do the work come to your office you help them do it—you would finish your three years having made an extraordinary difference in your community. In many ways that is what this bill is about. It is building on a decision way back in 1989 to hand responsibility for their future back to the people who could make it work, which was those in the rural industries themselves.

Back in 1989 it was John Kerin and the Hawke government that established the research and development corporation model. It is a unique one in the world and it is highly regarded, as we heard the member for Forrest say just a few minutes ago. RDCs were established under the Primary Industries and Energy Research and Development Act 1989 and for 24 years that act has been the mechanism for R&D money to flow through the rural sector, both from those in the sector's own contributions through their levies and from matched government funding. This bill that we are looking at today improves that process quite considerably, and it also is a Labor bill so again I am pleased to be standing as a member of the now Labor opposition having been a member of the Labor government when this bill was drafted earlier in the year.

There are extraordinary opportunities in the rural sector in Australia. I do not live in it as I do not live on the land although I spend a lot of time travelling through it. In fact, I make it business of mine to spend as much time as I can in our small towns not just because I think we should know about them but because I actually love them.

So I spend a lot of time in the rural parts of Australia. And it is quite clear that there are incredible opportunities for Australian agriculture and rural industries. As a nation we need to care that people in those sectors can actually do as well as they can—for a start, because like other businesses they have invested their money and we should care that people who invest their own money do as well as they can; but also because so much of it deals with food, and food is very much the stuff of life, as we heard the member for Forrest say.

When you look at the world there are many opportunities for our expertise to be used, not just to solve some of the problems we face in terms of food security in the world but also to use our expertise, both on the ground in growing markets—to literally export our businesses and our expertise—and to supply developing markets across the world in a whole range of foods that we do not actually invest in.

I look at my African community, for example, that has arrived in Parramatta recently. Most of them are farmers. I am not quite sure why some of them are living in Parramatta—I am not sure they have found their way to the places where their skills are really needed yet. But so many of them are farmers and their skills are in crops that we have not yet seen in Australia yet—over 50 varieties of potato, for example. These are incredible new crops that new and developing markets will want. And the expertise in Australia in efficiently producing good-quality, safe food, which is free of the worst of the toxins and the pesticides that you find in food elsewhere in the world, cannot be underestimated.

It was a great tragedy, I think, that through the eighties, nineties and what are known as the naughties, Australia gave up on some of its food processing so easily. Short-term problems with the Australian dollar and serious problems with drought, for example, which put our industries under incredible pressure, led us as a nation to in some cases abandon our rural neighbours and give up on what should be one of Australia's great growth sectors. As the middle-classes grow in India and China, they are going to want what I want and that most people in this place want. They are going to want to know that their food is clean and safe and fresh and contains the nutrients that they need.

As we see population growth around the world, and growing pressure on food supplies, we see issues of hidden hunger, we see people who have enough to eat but where the food is lacking in the appropriate nutrition. That is a problem we see growing in Europe and in most developing countries. So, again, the expertise in the Australian market in addressing some of these issues is phenomenal and we should be a world leader in this area. It is actually up to all of us to understand the value, not just in the industries as they are but in their potential, and get behind them and ensure that we are where we should be in what has been and is one of our most important, innovative and resilient sectors.

The history of this, as I have said, dates back to 1989. There was ad hoc support for R&D before that, but that was the point at which the system that we currently use to support R&D in the rural sector was developed. There are currently 15 of what are called RDCs—six statutory ones and nine industry owned ones—providing services to a diverse range or rural industries. They effectively provide a mechanism for industry to invest collectively in research and development—in other words, to map out their own paths as they see their own needs. The Australian government assists these industries by establishing a levy for the industry, and collecting it if the industry so requests, and then returning those funds to the relevant RDC less the cost of collection. In addition to that, the government matches the RDCs' eligible R&D spending up to legislated limits. In other words, an industry that decides that it needs to invest in R&D or innovation and which decides as an industry that it wants a levy can ask the government to collect that levy and pass the levy over, less costs. Then up to a cap the government matches the contribution of the industry. Again, that is a very good model that puts the control in the sector itself. As I said earlier, it allows a government to support good people who are doing good things in the way that governments can. It is a very interesting and quite effective model.

Back in 2011 there was a Productivity Commission review into this, and a number of suggestions were made. There was extensive consultation on it and a number of changes were recommended. These amendments actually carry through eight acts of parliament, and I am just going to read them because it gives a sense of how broad these sectors are. The eight acts that have to be amended here include: the Primary Industries and Energy Research and Development Act 1989, the Pig Industry Act 2001, the Dairy Produce Act 1986, the Egg Industry Service Provision Act 2002, the Wool Services Privatisation Act 2000, the Forestry Marketing and Research and Development Services Act 2007, the Horticultural Marketing and Research Development Services Act 2000 and the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act 1997.

One of the changes is in schedule 8 of the bill and it amends various acts to allow statutory RDCs to undertake marketing activities where requested by the industry. Industry owned RDCs can already do that, and the government does collect the levies where the industry decides that they wish them to be collected. But the government does not match those contributions for marketing, it only matches contributions for R&D. This amendment extends that capacity to statutory RDCs—again, currently only the industry owned ones can do that.

Schedule 5 of the bill amends six of the acts to enable the Commonwealth to match voluntary contributions to the RDCs. Because this has been such a successful program and so many people in the industry can see the benefits of making these contributions, there are actually considerable voluntary contributions as well. This amendment allows the Commonwealth to match voluntary contributions up to the existing cap, which for each industry sector is based on the gross value of production for that industry.

It also removes a couple of red tape-style provisions of the act. Schedule 9 of the bill will repeal section 26 of one of the acts so that statutory RDCs will no longer be required to submit their annual operating plans to the minister for approval. It was clear that it was becoming an unnecessary burden for both the RDC and the minister to actually review the operating plans on an annual basis. It also streamlines the appointment of RDC board members so that five board members will be appointed on a five-year basis with a number of suitable candidates on a reserve list so that unplanned board vacancies can be filled over the following 12-month period. Those two amendments are really about taking out some of the unnecessary red tape, which is always a good thing, and allowing these organisations to get on with what they do.

Another rather important change is that currently industries are levied on their request for an industry as a whole. But in the fisheries industry, for example, it would be quite useful to deal with subgroups within the industry from time to time. For example, the prawning industry already has a marketing strategy in place, which is quite separate. Schedule 4 of the bill amends the PIERD Act to allow for subsections of an industry to have a levy collected. It creates a new section to enable a statutory levy on an individual fishery industry sector to be collected if established by that industry sector. Then, of course, that levy will be matched also by the government up to the appropriate cap. Again, in an industry like fisheries, where some sections of it are so different from others, it is an important change.

These are quite interesting bills that deal with an incredibly important part of the Australian industry, a sector that have been managing their own R&D effectively since way back in 1989. It improves their capacity to do so and it removes some of the regulatory burdens associated with the activities of these all important RDCs. I commend these bills to the House.

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