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

I rise to speak on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority Board and Other Improvements) Bill 2019. 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 criticises the Government for repeatedly failing to legislate on agricultural matters in a timely manner".

At first glance, there is nothing particularly controversial about this bill, but it does indeed contain some quite controversial matters—the least not being the establishment of an advisory board for the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and the relocation of that very authority from here in Canberra to Armidale, in the electorate of the member for New England, with all the consequences of that politically charged decision and led of course by the member for New England.

What a coincidence it is that the authority was not moved to the Hunter electorate, or to the Parkes electorate or to the Hinkler electorate or to the electorate of Lyne. No, it was moved to the electorate of the member for New England. I'm sure all those other members I've just mentioned—and the members for Nicholls and Maranoa—could have had the APVMA as well, but, no, it went to the electorate of the then Minister for Agriculture. I won't use his name, because that's unparliamentary.

But the core of this bill is to reform and make more efficient the process for regulating and approving veterinary medicines and the chemical sprays we rely on so heavily in the agriculture sector to protect our crops and our livestock, and of course to deal with invasive weeds and pests. That extends right through to domestic companion animals; when you take your pet to the vet, they use medicines which are regulated by the APVMA. So it is a very important institution. Of course, the opposition agrees with the components of the bill which are designed to streamline those processes and to maximise the benefit of the work of the authority for rural and regional Australia—for the agriculture sector and indeed for Australians more generally. As I said, we all benefit from a system that delivers these agvet chemicals, as we call them, in a timely and effective way.

The APVMA is a body which has always struggled. It is typical of a government entity—too often underresourced and with all the difficulties that come with that for those dedicated people who work in our Public Service. One of the interesting things about the APVMA, of course, is that it relies on the recruitment and retention of highly professional and trained regulatory scientists and lawyers who work in an area quite unique and rare. They themselves are rare professionals, and even prior to the relocation of the APVMA the authority was struggling to secure and retain the staff it needs.

So you can imagine the impact when the former minister announced that he was packing the authority up and moving it to Armidale, so far away. Immediately, a very large number of people—I don't have the numbers with me today, but I've cited them in this place before—left the authority. Some of them were easily replaceable because they were working in areas where that skill level is more common. But with respect to the regulatory people—the scientists, the lawyers—it was obviously a far more difficult task. If I remember correctly, it forced the authority to go on a global search for those professionals, because too many of them here in Canberra—who of course have partners also working in the Public Service or elsewhere in Canberra, and who typically had kids in schools here in Canberra—decided not to take up the offer to move to Armidale, but to stay here and easily secure a job anywhere they liked. Obviously there are some very big corporate players in this space that would give just about anything to secure some of the very, very competent, professional and highly qualified people we had, and still have, in the APVMA.

The extraordinary thing is that things got so bad at one point that the government decided to breach its own government policy order—the order which determined that the APVMA could no longer be based in Canberra. This is the instrument that was used to relocate the authority. The Minister for Finance said that the authority could not operate within 100 or 150 kilometres of Canberra—I forget—and had to be within so many kilometres of a regional university. Those distances were interesting, because it didn't leave too many options other than Armidale, as you could imagine, although there were a couple of other areas that should have qualified and did qualify. I think Toowoomba may have been one of them—I might stand corrected. There were a few options, but it was obvious from day one that it was always going to be going to Armidale in the electorate of the member for New England. Again, that policy order says it can't be in Canberra. The APVMA can't work in Canberra. They can't congregate in Canberra. I remind people that at one stage they were meeting in a McDonald's in Armidale, but they weren't allowed to congregate in Canberra. Then, of course, the government decided that it was not working, so, in breach of their own policy order, they started allowing some of these highly professional people to work in Canberra—surprise, surprise. I don't have an updated figure, but I think there could be up to 50 people now with the APVMA working here in Canberra in clear breach of the government's own policy order.

When we asked about this in committee, Dr Parker, the CEO—the member for New England's hand-picked CEO—informed us that he had legal advice to suggest he could do this. Now, have a think about that. I ask members—it's very nice to have so many of them here today—to think about that. The former member puts in place a policy order that says you can't work for the APVMA in Canberra, and when it doesn't work, as we predicted, the CEO starts employing people in Canberra. And when we ask in committee, 'How is this so?' the CEO says, 'Oh, I've got legal advice to say I can do that.' Well, the first question is: why did he need to do that?

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