David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

The Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill 2017 aims to streamline industry reporting and support the operational efficiency of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, the APVMA. These simple, noncontroversial improvements will support the efficiency of the APVMA and reduce some unnecessarily regulatory burden on the agvet chemical industry.

The bill simplifies reporting requirements for chemical products so that these requirements are now based on the quantity and value of product sales. This simplifies the reporting process and significantly reduces reporting costs for industry, while ensuring Australia has the information available to meet our international reporting obligations and policy development needs. The bill also includes measures that will support the administrative efficiency of the APVMA and help improve the handling time for applications. These measures will increase the APVMA's flexibility in dealing with errors in applications and altering applications and promote quicker access to safe and effective chemical products.

The bill also removes an administrative barrier that currently prevents the holder from addressing the reasons for a product label suspension. This will allow such a suspension to be revoked if the holder can address the reasons for the suspension. The bill includes civil penalty provisions for providing false or misleading information. These provisions provide a broader suite of sanctions than are currently available to the APVMA for dealing with false or misleading information. This will provide the APVMA with the necessary tools to proportionately respond to any false or misleading information it receives.

Further measures in the bill will clarify the meaning of the expiry date for a chemical product, deal with the same ambiguities and remove some of the redundant provisions in agvet chemical legislation. Stakeholders support the measures in the bill which will deliver benefits to industry and the regulator. In addition, the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills had no comment on this bill, and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has advised that the bill does not raise human rights concerns.

Collectively, the measures in the bill will reduce the regulatory burden on industry and improve the efficiency of the regulator while ensuring that safe and effective agvet chemicals continue to be available to the community. The government announced in April 2017 that it would undertake a review of the whole agvet chemical legislative framework. In the meantime, the simple and non-controversial changes in the bill will improve efficiency and increase the speed with which farmers and other chemical users can get access to safe and effective chemicals. I commend the bill to the House.

See this speech in context