John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The shadow minister correctly mentioned the importance of biosecurity. The Export Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 and cognate bills are about the affordability of biosecurity. He mentioned that we are a large island. I am not sure whether we are on the smallest continent or the biggest island in the world, one of the other, but we have the luck of being surrounded by water and Tasmania takes even more advantage of that than the rest of the country, but that is another issue. This bill is about the biosecurity needs of our customers and about the needs of Australia. Biosecurity is a two-way trade. We need to be very careful about how things come to our country and about our reputation as goods go out. A as the member for Hunter correctly said , without a doubt the greatest selling point or marketing tool for the two-thirds of our production which leaves our shores is our clean, green image and our reputation for having equal to the best if not the best agricultural commodities in the world, whatever they may be.

I stress that this is also about the practicalities of trade. Australia is a trading nation and a resource-rich nation. Coal and iron ore can be stockpiled forever but perishable agricultural products in particular cannot be stockpiled. So you have to have your boxes lined up. It is no secret that I am a big believer that a lot of our future lies in our near neighbours. There are probably 400 million people in the three biggest countries closest to us—Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. There is pretty much nothing we produce that they cannot use. I believe in the future they should play a very much bigger role in trade than they do currently. It seems to me incredible that we do more trade with New Zealand, a country 4½ million people, then we do with almost a quarter of a billion people in Indonesia. That is something we have to redress. I see Indonesia as being a very big part of our future, not to mention the other countries. Wherever it goes, this is very much about us protecting our trade position and about protecting us from the things that come into Australia.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the bulk of our broadacre commodities—wheat, beef or wool and in the case of wool almost 100 per cent—are exported. For wool and grain, AQIS is not such a huge cost. For meat and niche market horticulture, and for new players in trade, the cost of paying for AQIS is a very serious issue. For those wanting to become established, it is a very serious issue. In striving for cost recovery, we should never for one second forget or assume that AQIS is always on top of its game, that it is always as efficient and least cost to industry as it can be because certainly it is not.

Personally, I believe the only way we will get to that peak efficiency is through contestable issues. As an example, in an inland town like Mildura in the Sunraysia I have met and spoken with a lot of people who, if they are not able to now, want to get through what is a complicated issue. We must make it contestable to act on behalf of the Commonwealth in biosecurity issues and train people to become experts to do inspections. It could be somebody who has another business or is educated in these things. It would be much cheaper for somebody who lives in the region to do an on-site inspection for all that is required by the country we are exporting to.

I am not convinced that we are totally on top of the game with the way AQIS works. AQIS is an essential body. The shadow minister was spot on when he said how important biosecurity is to us. We can be more efficient and less cost onerous particularly to new and small exporters for whom it can be a serious issue. In the past, we have committed to looking at the Commonwealth's responsibilities in some of these situations. In a sense, AQIS in some ways acts on behalf of the taxpayer, not just on behalf of the exporter.

I have always believed that we never get the best out of all of these things until we make them contestable. At the moment we are trying to create a level playing field, so I guess we are doing the right thing. In the future, we will have to look beyond what we are doing now to make it more efficient and faster. We have to make sure AQIS responds very quickly. There is not always a lot of warning when people are able to stitch up a deal, especially with China. China is a moving feast. We do not as yet have that trade deal, so we do not have specific lines of process and things can happen very quickly. The more we can speed things up and get involved with our near neighbours in providing what they want the better. We have to learn what they want and they have to learn what we have got. But never forget that the customer is always right.

I do agree with the shadow minister that biosecurity is a big thing for us. May AQIS never be moved out of the Department of Agriculture. AQIS's place is in the Department of Agriculture, in a very specific and a very important way. I take my hat off to those small exporters, particularly in horticulture and the smaller ones outside broadacre industries, who work their guts out. Agriculture can be a disastrous game in the broad sense, but even in the specific sense in horticulture things can happen overnight and they can get wiped out. They have to have the right crop at the right time, and they have to be able to act quickly. That is another reason that those doing the inspections have to be able to respond quickly when they are called upon and another reason that it should be local people who are trained to do this and not necessarily government employees. That could be a very good thing.

There is another reason that this is all so important for speed and every other thing. Agriculture in Australia is the oldest profession in this country since European settlement—and I presume our original inhabitants were agriculturalists in one way; they certainly harvested the country. I am totally convinced that unless every commodity has an export opportunity, they are never going to realise or be free of the yoke which is being felt more so in recent years, given that the domination of the two big supermarkets is up to 70 per cent or 80 per cent, whereas 25 or 30 years ago it was only around 40 per cent. The only way producers can be free of the yoke of the supermarkets is if they do not need them and they have an export option. I think that is incredibly important and it is why it is so important that we are able to respond quickly to the needs of exporters, large or small, broadacre or intensive. In that way, it will be easier to find markets where they can regularly supply some of the best products in the world, wherever it may be around the world, particularly to near neighbours. Our exporters and those who work with them and for them are the actual commercial heroes of our country. They need our protection.

See this speech in context