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

The APVMA is a shocking pork-barrelling exercise that threatens our farming community. It's already destroying productivity in the farming community. The Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority is a critical part of our farm economy and makes sure not only that farmers get their crop sprays and other chemicals and veterinary medicines that they need but also that they get them in a timely way—when new products are offered to the market, they get to the market very quickly. This forced relocation to Armidale is destroying the joint. Staff have left in a mass exodus, and it's impacting on the entity's capacity to do its job. I'll make a bet now: in the not-too-distant future the new minister, finally, will be making big changes. He will be revisiting the general policy order and saying, 'We are going to extend the time available to the APVMA to make this work,' but, more importantly, they will be changing it in a way that will allow more people to stay here in Canberra to work. In the not-too-distant future this government will be admitting that the APVMA relocation has been a failure. They will be left with no choice but to pretend they're having a relocation to Armidale, but in fact a large number of staff will be working here in Canberra, because they cannot find the personnel—the expert lawyers and the regulatory scientists—they need to do that work.

I challenge Minister Littleproud: he should just run up the white flag now and differentiate himself from the former minister and say: 'We're not going to waste $50 million or more on this relocation to Armidale. We're not going to undermine the productivity of our farmers. We're not going to threaten consumer health, because we eat the stuff that those sprays are used on and we want to make sure the regulator is up to the job. And we're not going to undermine our exports, because the APVMA plays a role in that regulatory regime, as well. We're not going to do that. We're going to gut this idea, forget the pork barrel and bring the APVMA back to Canberra, where it absolutely belongs.'

In posing my question—why are we debating this bill now?—I've touched on the history. People have already gone off the farm household allowance. They have exhausted their entitlement and here we are, in the last sitting fortnight, rushing a bill through the parliament to create this extension. We are still very unclear about what hoops people will have to go through who have already come off the farm household allowance. I invite the minister to explain that further to us when he makes his closing remarks. Is it going to be as hard as it was for people when they first went on the farm household allowance? Remember the member for New England saying: 'Oh, they don't have to apply or wait; they just get it.' That is the statement that led to the doctoring of his Hansard and subsequently the dismissal of his departmental secretary—one of the darkest periods of our history in this place. Why are we debating a bill that needs to be given effect basically from 1 July—this week? The government couldn't work out a month, two months or six months ago that in the absence of any other policy work in the last five years they're going to have to extend the farm household allowance? They had to wait until now? This is just incredible. Was it the drought tour that convinced the Prime Minister that he needed to extend the farm household allowance by a year? Surely not. I hope not, because that was just obvious to all and sundry.

What does the future hold for drought policy in this country? This is an interesting question. Something very curious happened in the Federation Chamber last night. I welcome the fact that during the week of the Prime Minister's infamous drought tour the relatively new Minister for Agriculture and Water started talking about climate, recognising the things I was saying earlier about accepting drought as not an abnormal event. He talked about resilience, he talked about adaptation and he talked about the challenge for some people in some parts of the country that were capable of being farmed 100 years ago and are not so capable of being farmed today. He was using all the right language. But the member for Calare had a motion on drought last night in which he mentioned none of those things. Interestingly, the member for New England contributed to that debate and, again, mentioned none of those things. I'm glad the member for Mallee is here, because he did. He understands this subject pretty well, in my view, and I'll give credit where credit is due. But who's in charge? Is the former member for New England still in charge of drought policy? He's still in denial, still wanting to roll out the boondoggles and defend his legacy. Or is the new minister in charge, backed by people like the member for Mallee? I hope it's the new minister, and I wish the member for Mallee the best in that regard, because we do need to get this job done. We need to embrace the intergovernmental agreement review. We need to rebuild the SCoPI process and construction, because that's the first step.

The other question I posed was on government priorities. Remember when agriculture was one of this government's five pillars of the economy? They hardly talk about the agriculture sector anymore. The member for New England was very fond of claiming credit when commodity prices were high and everything was good, but, now we have a crisis in all sorts of places, including the dairy industry, no-one wants to talk about agriculture anymore.

Let's have a look at the legislative agenda. The Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill 2017 was introduced into this House on 25 October last year. This bill enjoys bipartisan support. It has disappeared. The Export Control Bill 2017, a very important bill, was introduced into the Senate on 7 December last year. It hasn't been prioritised and has disappeared. It's an important bill which enjoys bipartisan support. The Biosecurity Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2018, another very important bill, was introduced into the House on 28 March last year. It is still in the House. It was introduced and has disappeared. The penalties for breaches of animal welfare standards in the live export trade were introduced on 24 May, never to be seen again. We know the reason for the last one: I foreshadowed an amendment, and the government won't bring the bill back, because it's fearful of people crossing the floor and of losing the vote.

How does this reflect on the government's priorities for agriculture? They won't even bring bipartisan bills into the House for debate and to be voted upon. They won't even put these bills on the legislative agenda. I don't have time to go through them tonight, but these are important bills. The department of agriculture is spending a very large slice of its time and resources trying to work out how to make the APVMA work in Armidale and the Regional Investment Corporation work in Orange, when it should be focusing on these very important and meaningful matters that affect our agricultural sector.

When the former minister was here, we heard about dams which were unproven, uneconomic and will never come to reality, and silly stunts around carp eradication. I said so many times that he was the worst agriculture minister in the history of Federation. That's in the past. I want the new minister to step forward and demonstrate that he's prepared to take the agriculture portfolio seriously. It's not just agriculture; they wiped fisheries and forestry out of the portfolio title—another silly mistake. We don't hear the new minister talk about fisheries or forestry. I know Senator Ruston does work in that area, but people want to hear their lead minister talk about these issues.

For five years a crisis has been looming in forestry because of our failure to grow the plantation estate, and what have we had in response? We've had an issues paper, which was eventually turned into a discussion paper and, last year, by no less than the Prime Minister himself, turned into a plan to have a plan—and we're still waiting for the plan. For five years we've known about the problem and have had nothing but discussion papers, the formation of committees et cetera. It's not good enough.

The opposition will be supporting this bill because, in the absence of any real progress on national drought reform for five years, we've no choice now but to further help farmers who haven't made that transition and haven't been given appropriate guidance or support by the government. Farmers will need another year, but what happens after that? Surely we'll be back here next year asking ourselves the same question if this government is not prepared to get serious about rebuilding the COAG process and about real collaboration with the states. Mr Littleproud has said it, but we want to see him walk the talk. They need to be serious about embracing the concept that the climate is changing and the change is here to stay. It has to be about resilience and adaptation. We have to help people find new business models, retrain and, sadly for some, acknowledge that they might not have an ongoing concern, because of a severely changing climate.

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