Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

This is a really important bill, not so much standing alone, but the issues it goes to are of critical importance to the agriculture sector in particular. Yes, I'm a bit surprised when I have a look at the speakers list to see so little interest from those on the other side—indeed, no interest from those who represent the National Party in this place. I have my own theories about why they are not in here to defend or advocate for this bill. In fact, I have a number of theories, but one of them is the broad recognition on the other side of the chamber of the folly that is the forced relocation of the regulator responsible for implementing and enforcing these regulations, the APVMA, to Armidale in the electorate of New England.

Because this bill not only goes to farm productivity and profitability, as important as they are, it goes to the heart of our prospects on export markets; it goes to the interests of every owner of a companion animal in this country; and, indeed, it goes all the way to human health. I'll be interested to hear from the member for Macarthur, Dr Mike Freelander, during his contribution to this debate, because he has a strong interest, given his profession, in human health and all the technicalities that go with that. This regulator, amongst other things, regulates the crop sprays that are used on the food we eventually consume. Few areas of public policy can be more important than that but, alas, the National Party are on the run because they know that the forced relocation of the APVMA is a boondoggle, a pork-barrelling exercise that will probably ultimately fail and will cost the taxpayer a very significant amount of money.

This bill, the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill 2017, seeks to make minor technical amendments to the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals (Administration) Act 1992, the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Act 1994 and the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemical Products (Collection of Levy) Act 1994. The explanatory memorandum states that the amendments will realise operational efficiencies, reduce unnecessary regulation, clarify ambiguities and remove redundant provisions.

The government argues that the bill:

I can indicate to the House that the opposition will be supporting the bill but notes that this legislation should have been implemented three years ago. The government has been slow to implement necessary reforms which were expected by industry stakeholders following the introduction of significant legislative reforms introduced by the former Labor government in 2013 to improve the efficiency of the APVMA. Labor's reforms saw promising signs of increased performance by the regulator emerge in 2016. Time frame performance for assessing pesticides applications within statutory time frames reached 83 per cent in the 2016 September quarter. That was a significant improvement.

However, with the ongoing negative impact of the APVMA relocation by the Turnbull government, these promising signs have been rapidly deteriorating. The APVMA reached only 30 per cent of its work within the statutory time frames for crop protection in the March 2017 quarter, 24 per cent in the June quarter and 36 per cent in the September quarter of 2017. This fall in performance can only be attributed to the member for New England's forced relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. The recent performance figures have improved slightly but are still not at the high of the time frames reached in the 2016 September quarter. I suggest that that slight improvement has been due to a scramble by the minister and the very hardworking team under pressure working under him to try to lift those figures in the face of the widespread criticism of the forced relocation of the APVMA. Industry stakeholders are seeking to have this bill passed as soon as possible, yet the bill could have been put forward much earlier than 25 October 2017 and certainly could have been debated earlier than now, February 2018.

Further, since its election the Turnbull government has failed to identify or deliver any legislative reform options that would result in any quantifiable ongoing efficiency dividend for the regulator. The former agriculture minister, the member for New England, has been all talk and no action on this front. Further legislative operational efficacies need to be implemented. An example of the all talk no action is the 2015 failed agricultural white paper, which indicated that the government would further streamline the approvals of ag and veterinary chemicals by reducing industry and user costs by around $68 million to improve timely access to productivity-enhancing chemicals whilst still ensuring appropriate safeguards. Three years on and we are only just debating this legislation in the House.

The bill consists of necessary minor technical amendments to assist in streamlining APVMA operations. Such amendments are to be expected following the introduction of the significant legislative reforms introduced by the former Labor government. The legislative amendments presented in the bill by the current government are three years later than they are required. This unnecessary delay highlights the lack of urgency, seen again by members on the other side today, and a lack of focus by the Deputy Prime Minister and the former minister in this portfolio.

However, criticisms of the department of late are absolutely not warranted. We have a government constantly seeking to blame others. They have been working in the most difficult of circumstances, and I should say both those in the parliament and those working within the APVMA. They have been doing their very best in this very, very difficult situation, working under a completely distracted minister of the day. Since deciding to relocate the regulator to Armidale in his own electorate, the former minister has failed to identify or deliver any legislative reform that would result in any quantifying ongoing efficiency dividend, as I've said.

Agricultural chemicals are a cost-effective, efficient, essential and sustainable option for farmers to use to control pests, weeds and diseases, and as such they represent a core input for modern farming systems. A streamlined, effective regulator capable of delivering more timely risk assessment approvals and registrations in a safe way is absolutely essential. This is why I will be moving a second reading amendment to further broaden this debate to allow members to reflect more broadly on the impacts of that relocation. I look forward to the member for Grey making a contribution at that level and on that topic.

If we go back to the beginning, when the Deputy Prime Minister first announced his forced relocation of the APVMA to his own electorate, he did so without any understanding, in my view, as to what the impact on the sector, or sectors plural, would be. In fact I have a theory that the Deputy Prime Minister didn't really understand what the APVMA did when he first announced the relocation of the APVMA, because if he'd had an understanding of what the APVMA did and how it interfaced with its clients and stakeholders—industry and to a much lesser extent farmers—he would never have proceeded with his shocking boondoggle.

On 10 February 2016 Minister Joyce actually said:

Moving the APVMA would allow it to have a closer interaction with the people who actually use agricultural and veterinary chemicals, as well as build a centre of excellence in the research of agricultural issues.

The APVMA rarely interfaces with farmers. This is another spin line from the Deputy Prime Minister in a blatant attempt to both justify this relocation and to appeal to his base, to appeal to votes in rural and regional Australia. The main clients and the people who mainly interface with the APVMA are the big industrial manufacturers that produce the chemical sprays, for example, and the animal health medicines—another good example—for farmers and owners of companion animals alike. These are companies which operate in global markets. For them, Australia is a relatively small market, and we are very fortunate, as a country and as a farm sector, that they maintain an interest in the Australian market because, without their ongoing involvement, farm productivity would rapidly decline further, as would, of course, sustainable profitability.

In the future, of course, if the Deputy Prime Minister is successful in driving this relocation to Armidale, people coming from Washington, or any overseas global centre, to Canberra to talk to the regulator will now have to fly to a capital city and then to Armidale. As the opposition spokesperson on agriculture, I regularly interface with the APVMA when there's a concern in the community about the efficacy of a product, the safety of a product or there's an issue about how the regulator has dealt with the product. I like to get a briefing from the APVMA, and they come up to the hill and meet in my office—I always appreciate that—and take me through the issues, put to rest some of the community concerns, explain the situation and maybe tell me how they intend to respond to the current controversy. In future, they'll be coming to visit me in Canberra from Armidale if the Deputy Prime Minister has his way. But I will return to that because I suspect he won't have his way in the end. I've certainly come to the conclusion that this forced relocation will not work because it can't work, and the minister was scrambling before he left the portfolio.

Here's my challenge to the new minister: ignore the member for New England, you owe nothing to the member for New England and you gain no advantage in the APVMA going to New England. Please—and it's a genuine appeal—have another look at this boondoggle, have another look at this pork-barrelling exercise and make your own assessment about the adverse impact it's having on the agricultural sector. Because what the member for New England was doing before he left the portfolio—and I always said that he'd wreck the show and then walk away, and I think I've been proven to be quite prophetic in that sense—was putting in alternative arrangements so that he could say he had moved the APVMA to Armidale when he hadn't moved the APVMA to Armidale at all. For example, a new digital strategy was put in to allow staff to work remotely, and there was an allocation of space in the Department of Agriculture so APVMA could sit there and undertake the work of the APVMA. I don't know how that's going to fit with his general policy order, because it seems to be in conflict with it. But there is no doubt that the then minister was scrambling to do things to make it work in the face of controversy, criticism and an inability to make it work.

He talks about the centre of excellence. There are two things: I thought I would visit the APVMA while I was in Armidale campaigning in the New England by-election.

Dr Freelander interjecting—

I thank the member for Macarthur for his interjection, and I look forward to his contribution again. They were only in McDonald's for a short time, I accept, but since then they've been in the Centrelink office in Armidale. I thought while I was there I would go and check this out to see how it's all going because I'd heard rumours there was a piece of paper on the front window saying that the APVMA had relocated to Armidale but there wasn't much activity going on in there.

I wandered into the Centrelink office and, as I walked in the door, I noticed—it wasn't a piece of paper, I must admit; it was far more sophisticated—a bit of plastic, maybe a foot square, with 'Commonwealth Government, Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority' on it. I thought there's a pretty good start, maybe I was wrong; it looks pretty official. I walked into what was a very, very significant Centrelink office with people everywhere. I scanned the room, looking for some sign of the existence of an APVMA officer but there were none to be seen. I approached the woman at the front counter, hoping she wouldn't recognise me, by the way—obviously my star hasn't hit dizzy heights. She did not, and I asked, 'Could you tell me how I'd go about making contact with someone from the APVMA?'

She just gave me a blank look. I said, 'You know, the pesticides authority.' She said, 'Excuse me?' 'I said, 'I just want to know how I go about making contact with someone from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority.' After a long pause, she said, with a distressed face, 'I think there's a phone number on the front window.' I thought: 'A phone number on the front window? I must have missed that.' I observed there was a sign posted on the window, so I went out. I said, 'There's no phone number.' There's not much happening at Centrelink in Armidale, I can tell you.

I also engaged with a number of people about the idea of an agriculture centre of excellence. The member for New England was trying to say that this doesn't have to be in Canberra; Armidale was going to be the interface with farmers. We know that doesn't happen. They're going to be part of a bigger plan, but, no matter whom I asked up there—and I spoke to leaders in the community of all sorts, such as from industry and local government—no-one had seen any sign of a plan for an agriculture centre of excellence. So all that can be discarded.

We said at the beginning, when we opposed the crazy idea of the relocation, that at least there would have to be a cost-benefit analysis. Surely, if you're going into this, you have to economically assess this thing and try to model and calibrate the impact? The Deputy Prime Minister refused. My advice is that the Prime Minister's office intervened eventually and said: 'You can't just keep winging this. You'll have to do a cost-benefit analysis.' So a cost-benefit analysis was commissioned and what do you think happened? There was a damning criticism at great expense. I won't quote the number because I might get it wrong, but the cost-benefit analysis was that it was an expensive exercise. Initially, they wouldn't release it. Again, under political pressure they were left with no choice. The cost-benefit analysis said the economic cost was $23.19 million, having excluded any potential cost to industry arising from the risk to the agricultural sector. The Deputy Prime Minister hadn't made any attempt to take the cost of the exercise into account: the cost to the chemical industry or, indeed—and this is not me talking—the cost to Australia's trading reputation. The people in our export markets want to know that we have a regime in place that protects human health. That was one thing. They said:

To effectively undertake the move of the APVMA and adopt relevant risk mitigation strategies, the cash cost to the government could be significantly higher than the estimated economic cost of $23.19 million.

One of the additional costs was the digital strategy that they were forced to admit. I note that a digital strategy may have been needed, in part, as we moved further into the 21st century, so you'd expect that, but there is no doubt that this was largely embraced as a way of trying to demonstrate that the relocation had been successful. Again, the government refused, despite our best attempts, to tell us what the cost of the digital strategy is and were unable to tell the consultant who undertook the CBA what the cost would be. I've heard $20 million, I've heard $40 million and I've heard $60 million—nearly three times the initial cost estimated. How much are we going to spend on this relocation that's going to so challenge our agricultural sector—maybe $100 million of taxpayers' money to shore up the member for New England's vote in Armidale? That's what this exercise is about—no more and no less.

The most significant risk identified through the analysis relates to the ability of the APVMA to relocate—that is, to recruit and move staff. Highly qualified, professional scientists and regulatory lawyers have been leaving the APVMA. This is why the performance has fallen so dramatically. It is all right for the member for New England to boast about housing prices in Armidale, but, if your spouse is another working professional in Canberra or you have kids in Canberra schools, it is very, very difficult to make that move. The last I heard was that they were offering big dollars—I've forgotten the amount. There were substantive relocation offers and I think there's been limited uptake. Again, these are additional costs.

Another key concern of the various stakeholders was the effect the relocation may have on the approval of new chemicals for use. Stakeholders are concerned that delays to the approval of new chemicals will arise as a result of the loss of staff, the disruption to business and/or the impact of the APVMA's current reform agenda. And I'd point out here that timing is everything with some of these chemical products for our farmers. To remain competitive they need to secure these chemicals in a timely way. Based on conservative estimates for a one-year delay in the approval of new products, the potential impact on the agriculture sector for crops alone could be between $64 million and $193 million per annum—not my assessment, not my words, but the words of those undertaking the government commissioned cost-benefit analysis of this relocation.

But it wasn't only the cost-benefit analysis that warned the Deputy Prime Minister of his ill-thought-out pork barrel. The former CEO of the APVMA—the highly regarded and now departed Kareena Arthy—stressed the negative impact that the relocation would have on the authority when she wrote a letter to Minister Joyce on 31 July2015 stating: 'The most significant challenge highlighted by the outcomes of the staff survey'—which she had undertaken—'is that around three-quarters of regulatory scientists would probably not move if the APVMA relocated. Only seven regulatory scientists have indicated a willingness to move. Even if all scientists who have indicated they may consider moving agree to move, there would be only 19 regulatory scientists with knowledge of how to access registration applications and undertake underlying scientific assessments.'

This brings me back to another ruse by the Deputy Prime Minister. He said he was going to train people at UNE in Armidale to do this work. Now, you don't complete your undergrad and go to the APVMA and start dealing with these very complex issues. It take years of postgraduate and in-house training—I think Kareena Arthy might have suggested seven, on average—for a person to secure the technical capability to do this work proficiently. Obviously that's not going to happen as undergraduates leave UNE. And I'm told, by the way, that the UNE course is struggling very substantially because it can't get students, and the government hasn't made any contribution to the university to make this thing work. So they're struggling with course work. They're struggling for students.

I could go on to quote Kareena Arthy, but I'm going to run out of time. I can tell you that she made very significant criticisms of this before she left the organisation—or was effectively forced to leave the organisation, because she knew that the organisation was effectively going to collapse and she wasn't prepared to stand and try to fight the minister any longer and try to make something work that just couldn't possibly work, and all the consequences that come with that. Again, the reality is that the APVMA recently indicated in its business model that:

The construction of the new business models for Armidale should be regarded as a high priority and delivered by a full-time team headed by a senior executive with a direct reporting line to the CEO. In order to insulate the team from the day-to-day and operational pressures of a busy regulator …

These are all indicating the problems that are being encountered. They go on:

The maintenance of a sufficient internal scientific capability will require vigorous efforts to retain and recruit appropriately skilled regulatory scientists. This will require active management of staff relocations including incentives for staff to relocate and an accelerated recruitment program. The APVMA should also consider targeting staff from overseas pesticide and veterinary chemical regulators, either on permanent appointment or on secondment.

So there you go. This is what it's come to. The situation is so bad that they're not going to be employing Australian scientists and regulatory lawyers anymore, because they've all flown the coop—understandably. They're all highly qualified people. They won't have any difficulty at all securing alternative employment. Now we're going overseas to secure the people we need to perform the task of regulator in this country. So up to $100 million of taxpayers' money, a collapse in the capacity of the APVMA, and so many staff have left we're now going to have to employ overseas people to do the jobs of those who are leaving—simply because, as I said earlier, you cannot train people to do these jobs in the time forced upon us by the forced relocation.

The cost to the taxpayer, the cost to the agricultural sector, the potential cost to every person in this country who relies on their vet to administer veterinary medicines to their animals, the cost on our export markets, the potential costs to human health, which I'm sure the member for Macarthur will make significant reference to—they are very, very significant. Again, it's not just me saying it; it's not just the opposition saying it. It's the chemical companies and the peak organisations that represent them. It's the peak organisations that represent veterinary medicines. It's the farmer on the ground and the National Farmers' Federation.

I think I can say this pretty confidently, though I haven't ticked them off: it takes a special sort of talent to have every farm organisation in the country oppose a measure taken by a National Party agriculture minister. What it indicates is the extent to which the member for New England was prepared to go to shore up his political position. Some will say: 'Oh, that's ridiculous. The member for New England won his seat easily in the by-election.' Well, we know that was a slightly different dynamic, a different equation—an unusual situation where the sitting member was running again in a by-election, something we've rarely, if ever, seen before. It was a local member, as we saw in Bennelong too, securing a sympathy vote because of the unfairness, as they saw it, in the constitutional arrangements et cetera. But we know the real truth is that the member for New England did relatively poorly in Armidale and was outgunned by the former member for New England, Tony Windsor, in that election. Of course, he did much better in Tamworth. We know Tamworth is his strong base and Armidale's a more progressive university town, where he doesn't do so well.

The member for New England had a brilliant plan up his sleeve—he'll just move an agency! He must've rolled a few dice, spotted the APVMA and, obviously not really understanding what it does, decided he'd move that. And the rest is history. Let's hope we can tidy up the act. He's moved on from the portfolio now. Last week we started to tidy up the mess he'd left behind. We started last week with that other boondoggle called the Regional Investment Corporation. It's a shocking piece of public policy too, but at least we've now secured some amendments to improve the governance around that new entity. But I again appeal to new Minister Littleproud to take a look at this and, on a bipartisan basis, say: 'I understand this is a mess. It needs to be fixed.' I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that since the former Agriculture Minister decided to force the relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) to Armidale in his own electorate, the Authority has suffered critical staff loses and declines in operational efficiency".

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