Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased that with the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Removing Re-approval and Re-registration) Bill 2014 the government is delivering on the commitments it made before the election to make some amendments to the APVMA and to wind back some of the excesses of the reforms that were undertaken by the last government in the middle of the year but are not ready to be implemented until July this year. In doing so the government is sticking to its word—lifting red tape, supporting efficiency and getting rid of regulatory overreach.

Last year I was seconded to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture, Resources, Fisheries and Forestry for its review into the APVMA amendments that were before the House at that time. I have some insight into these issues that are being discussed today and in fact I had a significant hand in writing the then opposition's dissenting report. Broadly, the main issue of contention the coalition had then with the government's reforms was the compulsory and regular re-registration process of chemicals that had been in use in agriculture for a long time in many cases. I would like to read three short paragraphs from the dissenting report. Paragraph 5.3 states:

However we believe one of the bills 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.

Paragraph 5.4 states:

The bill states one of its objectives … is to reduce time-frames for processing applications and admits to backlog in processing …

Paragraph 5.5 states:

It is of great concern to the dissenting members that the proposed mandatory re-registration process will lead to a far heavier work-load for the APVMA and this in turn will lead to longer delays in processing, an escalation in staffing requirements and a more expensive system for little perceived gain.

Australians often make the mistake of thinking that Australia is a major food producer. That is not the case at all. Australia is a major food exporter. We are not a major food producer.

Let us look at the biggest agricultural commodity that we market: wheat, which is something I know a little about, having grown it for most of my life. The biggest producer of wheat in the world is the European Union, which produces 133 million ton per annum. China produces 120 million ton, India 95 million ton a year, and the US 60 million ton a year. Australia comes in at No. 8 on that table. We produce around 21 million ton, or less than four per cent of the combined crop of the top 20. So we produce less than three per cent of the world crop. We are one of the world's biggest exporters; we are not one of the world's biggest producers. Consequently, for things like agricultural chemicals that means we are not one of the world's big markets.

All chemical breakthroughs in the world, because of their nature, actually come from what some people decry as the big chemical companies. They are the only people who can undertake this kind of research. They are the only people with the money and the expertise. Their investment has led to a huge explosion in agricultural profits and environmental advances right around the world. As I said, we are a small market even for things like wheat chemicals. You can only imagine how big a market we are in world terms if you farm persimmons or asparagus.

When this automatic re-registration process kicks in whoever is manufacturing the chemicals at the time will look at the market and say, 'Is it worth me investing this money to re-register this chemical in this market?' These large companies invest great sums of money in developing new chemicals which they in turn have the right to market exclusively for I think about 20 years under the patent process. Once the patents expire any manufacturer can access that scientific knowledge and manufacture the chemicals. This always leads to cheaper chemicals for farmers and a good outcome for all, but of course that means the market then becomes fragmented and every manufacturer of chemicals then has to re-register each formulation that the company sells and each packet size that the company sells. So the process can get quite complicated and quite expensive.

It is of grave concern to Australian agriculture that the more of these review processes we trigger when there is no real reason to do so will actually lead to our producers not being able to avail themselves of the world's best technology. And if we are to be significant players in this great opportunity in the world as its desire increases for more refined foods and higher protein foods, if we are to be a key player in this role, then our farmers will need the best technology because we know that Australia is not a cheap production platform.

In essence, the main complaint about the previous government's reforms last year was this automatic reregistration process. The APVMA have plenty of processes where if new evidence should come to hand regarding chemicals that have been registered for many years, then that triggers in itself an automatic review process. What we are proposing here is that chemicals can be re-registered using the current science and the manufacturers will not have to re-prove their case, as it were. They can just say, 'Here we are; we've had no complaints'. Basically it is a book entry to achieve the ongoing registration of those compounds.

This leads me to a few other things. I worry about that green fringe that protests against 'filthy chemicals in agriculture'. I had a mate say to me once, 'You know how these chemicals are such terrible things. Name me something that's not made out of chemicals'. I was of course speechless; it is a little difficult. But I worry that the debate gets abused and distorted. For instance, one of the things people who would like to stop chemicals being used will tell us is that if a chemical has been deregistered, then it is barred from being used in, say, Europe or in the US. Being unregistered does not mean that a chemical is barred; it just means that no manufacturer has thought that that particular market is big enough or worthwhile enough for them to register the chemical in that particular market. As I said, it is the same kind of danger we face in Australia. So when I hear people say that a chemical is barred from use in some particular market, I think that you really need to dig a little bit deeper and have a look to see why that chemical is not registered. There are all kinds of reasons why it may not be registered in another market. It might be the proximity of populations to where you are using compounds that may be difficult to handle, but perfectly safe to use on a crop. It may be because they have a load of other alternatives. It may be because their agriculture systems are totally different to ours and they do not need that particular chemical. So as I said: if it becomes uneconomical for the manufacturer, it just does not happen.

What is at risk here, as I alluded to a little earlier, is the enormous opportunity for Australian agriculture in the near and medium terms. I was at a Landcare type function only a week or so ago. We had a facilitator who asked us all in our particular section how optimistic we were about the future of Australian agriculture. There was a smattering of arms raised across the room. I think I was the only person who put my hand up and said, 'I'm extremely optimistic'. I was questioned: why would that be? I said: 'You should look at our last 30 years; it's been phenomenal. The advent of what I would call the chemical revolution and, in concert with that, the no-till revolution has absolutely transformed Australian agriculture. We have seen our soil fertility grow year on year. We have seen our production grow year on year. We have seen micro-organisms within the soil build up under the processes we are now using because we keep all the vegetable residues either on top of the soil or within the soil.' I think on that basis we have every reason to be optimistic about agriculture, but we must give our farmers the best tools.

I am going to digress a little and talk about a chemical called glyphosate. It is glyphosate that has become the most commonly used chemical throughout the world and has been such a boon for civilisation. I once had a leading Argentinian agriculturalist called Carlos Crovetto tell me: 'The man who invented the glyphosate molecule should be given the Nobel Prize for peace. He has done more for the conserving of the world's soils, he has done more for the feeding of the world than any other person in the history of the world.' In fact that man did win a US science award, but I think maybe Carlos was right—he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

This morning I hosted a group in the house who are looking at the reliance in Australia on the chemical glyphosate, but also our need to then use a range of chemicals around it. One in particular that we use is paraquat. Paraquat is an S7 poison and there is some concern in agricultural ranks that the green fringe will try to limit farmers using this S7 poison. Now farmers have a very, very good record with handling this chemical, I might point out. It smells pretty bad, but the smell is artificial; it is put in so that we treat it with respect—and farmers do. Paraquat is very important because what we are seeing in Australian agriculture—in worldwide agriculture—is resistance. Not everyone understands resistance, but in fact it is evolution in action. When we put pressure on nature, nature will take some time and then it will adapt. Someone explained to me once that resistance was like a lawnmower—that is, if you go out with a lawnmower as the grass comes up and runs to head and you keep chopping the heads off, you keep chopping the heads off and you keep chopping heads off, then you will never let the plant go to seed that has the tall heads. In the end the only plant that ever goes to seed is the strain within that grass that had a short head. And then you will have converted that grass to a short-head variety—shorter growing. That is what happens with chemical systems. When you get onto a good thing and you keep using it, the plant adapts. That is what is happening with glyphosate worldwide.

This morning Professor Stephen Powles from the University of Western Australia likened glyphosate to a one-in-100-year outcome, like penicillin. What has penicillin done to the world and what have we done to penicillin? We have overused it. We are using up our shots on the most important medical breakthrough in the 20th century. We are doing the same with our glyphosate. That is why it is so important that these other chemicals are licensed in our market and take the pressure off this one chemical that has totally transformed agriculture throughout the world.

So when I think of the APVMA and the rules that we give it to operate under, what I want to see is that it is totally driven by science and not by public opinion, that farmers get access to the best tools in the world, that pressure groups to not take them away from us, and that we are able as a nation to harvest that great potential that our agricultural industry offers for us in the future.

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