Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This a very important bill. We know that Australia can produce some of the best food and fibre of any nation. We also know we have some of the highest costs of production. We know that is related to our labour costs, but a lot of this is also related to the input costs of things like farm chemicals. Unfortunately, the red tape that surrounds the whole business of applying for the use of those chemicals to be approved in this country was made much worse under the previous government. They introduced different legislation which we must now amend by removing reapproval and re-registration through the bill we are debating tonight: the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Removing Re-approval and Re-registration) Bill 2014.

Australia has one of the best reputations for chemical-free production. Of course, we have to use some chemicals to manage pests and diseases, but we have such a stringent regime and such well credentialled primary producers that it is extraordinarily rare—in fact, I cannot think of a single case—that any products on our shelves that are made, produced, grown or manufactured in Australia or products from Australia that are exported to another country have been held up as chemically contaminated. We have an extraordinarily good and fiercely defended reputation. But we cannot be bogged down in the additional red tape that Labor imposed on us—and we are not quite sure why. They just had a frenzy of additional regulation and layers of bureaucracy which meant it took more time to do the job and made it even more expensive for food producers to do their job. So this is a very important bill indeed.

There was a very careful and closely considered committee inquiry that examined the Agriculture and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012. Not surprisingly, there was a dissenting report, which said:

… we believe one of the bill's key modifications; the intention to install a system of mandatory re-registration lacks sufficient justification and is likely to create a new layer of compliance and bureaucracy on the pesticide and veterinary medicines industry without demonstrable improvements in efficiency or outcomes and that extra costs will be passed along to Australian farmers.

I say 'hear, hear' to that. That is exactly what it did. Fortunately, we as the coalition have come into power before too much damage could be done by that Labor bill. Tonight, we set things right.

In case Australian consumers who are listening to this are not aware of the problems of chemical contamination in food supplies or food chains elsewhere in the world, I remind you that more than three million hectares of China's farmland is now:

… too polluted with heavy metals and other chemicals to use for growing food, a Cabinet official said Monday, highlighting a problem that is causing growing public concern.

This is from an article published in December 2013. It goes on:

The threat from pollution to China's food supply has been overshadowed by public alarm at smog and water contamination but is gaining attention following scandals over tainted rice and other crops. The government triggered complaints in February when it refused to release results of a nationwide survey of soil pollution, declaring them a state secret.

The figure given at a news conference by Wang Shiyuan, a deputy minister of the Ministry of Land and Resources, would be about 2 percent of China's … arable land.

Some scientists have given higher estimates of as much as 24.3 million acres, or one-sixth of the total arable land, though it is unclear how much of that would be too badly contaminated for farming.

Clearly, we in Australia have to jealously guard the low risk, almost zero risk, of chemical contamination of our arable land. We have to make sure that we do not compromise our current clean, green credentials with things like the insatiable search for coal seam gas, which we are not yet sure about in terms of groundwater contamination and, ultimately, perhaps soil contamination as the contaminated aquifers are brought to the surface and 'ponded' on what was arable farmland. We have to watch that issue very closely as a nation. I have enormous sympathy for people in agriculture right now, fighting the good fight in the most arable parts—for example, in parts of Queensland and into New South Wales around the Liverpool Plains and Tamworth area.

The explosive growth of Chinese industry, overuse of farm chemicals and lax environmental enforcement have left swathes of their countryside tainted by lead, cadmium, pesticides and other toxins. The whole business of China's contamination of their food chain struck home in February-March this year when SPC Ardmona became very concerned after finding that lead levels in cans of peaches imported from China were so high that they were a risk for human consumption, particularly by the young or the elderly. A lot of that canned peach came in the three-kilogram sizes, which are typically bought by the food services sector, say, for aged care, hospitals, prisons and the Defence Force, and of course the consumer in those circumstances—the elderly lady or the Defence Force personnel or people in custody—have no knowledge of where the food is from when it is served to them in their meals. We have found that the chemical contamination of those canned peaches, the lead contamination, was way above what is safe for human consumption. So you have to ask: how did that heavy metal contaminated product get into Australia?

Besides very important veterinary and chemical legislation, we are supposed to have very, very sound and rigorous testing of our food in terms of any additives and contaminants such as pesticides, antibiotics, microorganisms and metals. We have a whole industry of testing food standards. The standards are described in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code as applying to all food produced or imported for sale in Australia and New Zealand and, as I say, this code is rigorous. It includes standards for labelling of additives and contaminants. So how does some of this product get onto our shelves and, in particular, gets fed to our most vulnerable? Of course there is a huge cost incentive to pick up imports and sell them into the food services sector because, for example, a three-kilo tin of imported peaches sells for some $6 in Australia compared to $9 for the Australian-made product, so there is a huge incentive there to cut costs if you are in one of those sectors like aged care or a hospital.

We test for a whole range of contaminants particularly chemicals. But I am concerned that our testing regime under Labor was compromised with cutting costs and with a very tiny proportion of foods being tested. Surveillance foods are all imported foods that are not considered risk foods. How does it work? When risk foods are imported by a new importer or from a new manufacturer, 100 per cent of the shipments are tested. The risk foods are detained by customs for testing and are not released until the test results are returned. But once there are five consecutive shipments passed—in other words, there are no problems with them in all tests—the rate of testing drops to 25 per cent of shipments. After 20 consecutive shipments have passed this 25 per cent of sampling, the testing rate drops to five per cent of shipments only. If you are a clever importer, you make sure that that first number of shipments are absolutely first-class. They are from uncontaminated areas, perhaps in China. Perhaps they are from other-country sources or re-exported out of your country to make sure that they pass those first tests. Once you have got to that magic figure of only five per cent of your imports being tested, then virtually anything goes. These shipments are not held until the test results are known. They pass through customs.

If the food fails a test in the Department of Agriculture, one of the five per cent, then the relevant food regulatory authorities can do a product recall, but this is at the authority's discretion. Of course once a surveillance food fails a test, then future shipments from that importer and manufacturer are increased back to the 100 per cent rate and so that system starts again until you get down once more to just five per cent of your products being tested because you have had five consecutive shipments pass all tests.

That must be how the Chinese contaminated product got through, I assume. I assume that if it was properly tested for contamination it would have been found. Clearly, those samples were not tested. I am most anxious that our regime within Australia, guided by our own agricultural and veterinary chemicals legislation, is the best in the world. It needs to be, and when we say a product is produced or grown or manufactured in Australia that must be the simple truth.

Our current labelling laws of course allow a lot of misinformation to pass into the public arena. That is another issue we as a coalition must deal with, the fact that Codex Alimentarius allows that if 50 per cent of the value of the product has been met or has been incurred in Australia, including labour and overheads and all of those values, you can call the product 'Made in Australia'. That should not be the case. If it is more than 50 per cent transformed in Australia, for example, if your fish comes in frozen from Thailand but is crumbed in Melbourne, then you can call that Made in Australia as well. So we have labelling problems which can mask serious contamination issues as well.

But I am concerned in this debate about chemical contamination. We have got to make sure that when a consumer whether in the United States, Canada, China or Singapore sees 'Product of Australia', they feel totally assured that the product does not have any chemical contamination, that it is some of the cleanest and safest food to be found anywhere in the world, and that they are prepared to pay a premium for that high value-added product, say, a baby food or a food for the elderly. That is what we are aiming for in Australia. We do not need our agribusiness industry to be tied down and shackled with cost imposts forced upon them through what Labor tried to do. This amendment gives us still one of the most stringent and vigorous agricultural and veterinary chemical legislative regimes in the world. I commend that. That is a very important thing that we do. All of the safeguards will remain in place in terms of making sure that nothing gets past the APVMA. It will retain all powers to recall unsafe chemical products, or suspend or cancel the registration of a chemical product if the product no longer meets criteria for registration. In fact these provisions were recently strengthened and streamlined by the amendment act.

So as a representative of the food bowl of Australia, which supplies more than 25 per cent of dairy produce of Australia, more than 80 per cent of our pears, more than 90 per cent of Australia's kiwifruit, the best beef product that can be found in Australia and the best oilseeds, I am most concerned that our government does away with all of the rubbish that was put through by the previous government, which did not understand anything beyond the tram tracks, beyond metropolitan Australia. So I commend most heartily this Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Removing Re-approval and Re-registration) Bill 2014 and I hope it has a very speedy passage through both this and the other house. I thank you.

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