Louise Markus (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Removing Re-approval and Re-registration) Bill 2014. This bill is one key part of our commitment to cut red tape so that small business and industry can get ahead. We, the coalition, recognise that too many businesses have become entangled in unnecessary and costly regulations. The legislation before the House delivers on our election commitment to introduce further efficiencies, particularly to the regulation of agriculture and veterinary chemicals—agvet—by removing the reapproval and re-registration scheme—a duplication in that scheme.

This bill is about achieving a balance in the approach to safety and regulation within the agriculture sector while ensuring that there are no excessive duplications. Agriculture is one of the most significant industry sectors in our nation, and this sector within the electorate of Macquarie plays a vital role in defining the character and the landscape of the region. We have one of the largest privately owned mushroom-growing producers in the nation. We also have a significant number of boutique apple growers and wineries, just to name some of the agriculture that is taking place in the seat of Macquarie, in both the Hawkesbury and in the Blue Mountains.

Australia currently has close to 12,000 separate agricultural chemicals and veterinary medicines that are registered with the Australia Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, known as the APVMA. The APVMA is the federal government statutory authority established in 1993 to centralise the registration of all agricultural and veterinary chemical products into the Australian marketplace. The APVMA estimates that Australia's primary production is worth an estimated $30 billion a year with an export value of over $25 billion. Pesticides and veterinary medicines are vital to this production; they assist with food quality control and fibre production. This important industry must have the proper safeguards without the burden of over regulation. These reforms aim to reduce red tape for farmers and other businesses and encourage the development of new chemistry with a range of benefits for farmers and other users, the environment and the community. It is about getting the balance right.

The bill puts forward amendments to the previous government's amendment act. The amendment act was passed by parliament in June 2013 and included the introduction of a scheme for reapproval of active constituents and re-registration of chemical products to commence on 1 July 2014. We believe that the new mechanisms put forward in the former government's amendments were not required. They only created a duplicate of the existing system and sought to impose additional costs on industry. What is more, they would have been likely to result in a loss of safe chemicals because many cheap off-patent chemicals would not be economical to re-register. To re-register well-established products over and over when the products have not changed is an unnecessary burden on any business, especially for our farmers and producers who already operate in a sometimes tough, competitive and often volatile environment.

There are a few elements crucial to this bill that I would like to emphasise to the House. The bill will introduce new processes for notification of the simplest changes to a chemical registration. It will also allow for a very simple application for less complex variations. For example, if a company wants to make a minor change to product packaging, they do not need to have a technical assessment and lodge an application that would normally cost around $1,000. Instead they can just inform the APVMA and make the change. We are further reducing red tape by allowing for less frequent renewal of registrations. It is important to highlight the reasons we are doing this: a renewal is simply an administrative process to extend the registration and has no checks for safety and performance. The regulator, APVMA, has strong, established systems already to trigger a review if potential risks to safety and performance have been identified. Therefore, frequent renewing is not necessary and nor is it helpful to those having to fill out the paperwork. The regulations will set the period for renewal, which could be up to seven years. Furthermore, the bill will enable the rewriting of provisions that allow APVMA to collect information from suppliers of chemicals to make sure products being supplied are the same as those the APVMA registered. This allows the regulator to require testing of a product to ensure its safety and efficacy.

These changes will be most welcome to producers and farmers in my electorate of Macquarie. The region of the Hawkesbury includes the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, which is one of the most productive agricultural areas of Australia. This catchment produces around l5 per cent of the state's agricultural produce, including a large proportion of Sydney's poultry; leafy green vegetables; mushrooms, which I have already mentioned; and some dairy produce. Agvet chemicals are critical to the quality of this supply chain and farmers do not need to be bogged down with excessive paperwork and administration in order to access and utilise these substances. These reforms will assist in boosting day-to-day productivity and let producers get on with the job—what they are best at doing.

It is interesting to note that the agricultural industry has calculated that removing the reapproval and re-registration scheme will save it up to $9 million annually in red tape and associated costs. These reforms will also benefit manufacturers, importers, wholesalers, retailers and users of agvet chemicals and will have a positive knock-on effect for this sector. The coalition government is committed to lifting the burden on the agricultural sector; it does not want to get in the way unnecessarily. Ultimately, it is small businesses like the ones I have already mentioned in my electorate who create jobs. We have to make sure the government works for them, not the other way around. The coalition is holding to its commitment to cut $1 billion every year in red and green tape costs. Overall this will improve our nation's competitiveness, help to create more jobs and encourage innovation. I commend the bill to the House.

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