Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I foreshadow that I will be tabling and moving a second reading amendment in the course of my contribution today.

At the outset, it's important to emphasise that the opposition is going to support the Excise Levies Legislation Amendment (Sheep and Lamb) Bill 2020, but frankly it's just disappointing that here we are again debating another bill that should have been passed long ago. Sadly, farmers are becoming accustomed to the fact that they are often overlooked by this Liberal-National government, which portrays itself as representing them but whose actions betray its words about what will be done. During 2017, Sheep Producers Australia commissioned a review of the impacts of any change to the Australian definition of 'lamb' such that it would harmonise the Australian definition with that of our friends across the Tasman in New Zealand. In March 2018, SPA endorsed a change in the industry definition based on a formal industry-wide call for feedback. In March 2019, an amendment to the Export Control (Meat and Meat Products) Orders 2005 changed the definition of lamb. However, it was not reflected in all legislation, which brings us here today.

This bill was introduced in the House of Reps on 17 June 2020 and seeks to align the definition of 'lamb' for the purpose of imposing levies and imposing sheep and lamb customs charges and alter the statutory definition of 'lamb' to include 'an ovine animal that is under 12 months of age, or does not have permanent incisor teeth in wear'. These bills will bring Australia's definition of sheep and lamb in line with international competitors and streamline the levy system for industry. It will also bring administrative clarity to levy payers by ensuring consistency across the statutory definitions of sheep and lamb and the levies and charges that are imposed on the animals.

But, as always with this government, it's been a long time coming. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, the SPA endorsed the changes to the definition of sheep and lamb in March 2018, over two years ago, and here we are, in December 2020, still attempting to implement these changes. It's yet another example of the government failing to prioritise agriculture and overlooking the importance of an efficient and streamlined research and development scheme. As we know, the levy system allows producers to collectively fund research and development, marketing, animal health, biosecurity and other projects that will benefit their industry. We've got to ask ourselves: why has it taken the government over two years to amend the definition in these acts?

I'm not here to speculate about the monetary effects on R&D of the government failing to bring this bill before parliament sooner; however, I do think it's appropriate to reflect on what it says about the government's priorities, and agriculture certainly isn't one of them. Unfortunately, it is a story all too familiar to our farmers. This government has failed to prioritise agriculture legislation for the past seven years. To name a few, the Wine Australia Amendment (Label Directory) Bill 2019 was introduced in the Senate on 2 December last year. Similarly, the Agriculture Legislation Amendment (Streamlining Administration) Bill 2019 was introduced last December but hasn't been passed. The fact is the government makes the big announcements, gets the headlines out there, throws meaningless amounts of money at industry but has done nothing to fix the gaping policy vacuum that's been created by seven years of inaction by this government.

Since becoming the shadow minister for agricultural and resources, I have been able to undertake regional trips for the portfolio, particularly in regional New South Wales and regional Victoria, and I have been grateful for the chance to tour with the member for Eden-Monaro, Kristy McBain; the member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman; and senator for Victoria, Raff Ciccone. In Eden-Monaro, there was a packed schedule for meeting with the Tumbarumba Vignerons Association, touring the Hyne Timber Tumbarumba Mill and visiting Batlow Apples—I'll speak further in relation to the Tumbarumba Vignerons Association in an upcoming bill. I just wanted to stress that I've got nothing but full admiration for the heartfelt and passionate commitment of these businesses to overcome everything nature threw at them over the last 12 months. When you think about droughts, bushfire and then the pandemic on top of that, these businesses, like most in the sector, have undertaken an extraordinary amount during that period of time.

What I saw across these communities is the impact of government apathy or delay, particularly through bushfire and drought recovery. It is taking far too long for government assistance to come through. We need to think of ways to protect people who are under threat and jobs that are under threat in the regions and rural communities that are feeling that pressure. It was particularly staggering when I took into account that it's been over a year since those bushfires, particularly in regional New South Wales, started to sweep through. It took ages to get the assistance in place, and then on top of that, after that delay, new announcements seemed to be—maybe I'm cynical—timed to be held with a by-election that was occurring in early July. Even in my recent visit in November, it was still taking time for that money to flow through. It simply should not be the case that people that endured so much had to wait for so long.

I was able to visit the seat of Macquarie on National Agriculture Day, a day when we congratulate Australia's agriculture sector for helping put high-quality food on our tables and, importantly, for being an employer of over 319,000 people and 85,000 farm businesses and making a contribution of over $60 billion to our nation's economy—and that has increased, as has been recorded and noted today by ABARES. The member for Macquarie and I visited Bilpin Cider, where I met Sean Prendergast to hear how their business has grown since 2015 and the challenges they faced when they had to close their cellar door at the height of the pandemic.

Whilst Bilpin Cider didn't lose any of their trees to bushfire, other businesses weren't so lucky. For example, the owners of Bilpin Fruit Bowl showed me what they had lost and the way in which those fires crept on to their property and took down so much. In fact, the bushfire affected a lot of the property itself, and they're recovering from that. I might say, to the credit of the government, some of the funding has gotten through for them to recalibrate their business in different ways, and I think they were very happy with assistance that the federal government that finally got through to them. I congratulate the federal government on that funding. When visiting there, I met with Margaret and Simon Tadrosse to hear about the challenges facing them and other producers.

It's important to know that they lost over 7,000 apple trees and acres of netting protecting their crops in those bushfires in December last year. The damage to their property is estimated to be $3 million and, quite frankly, it took them quite a bit of time to get their insurance. There were quibbles with insurance and trying to get that through. It finally did happen, but it's something that has been of concern which I have picked up along the way—the amount of time it took for the insurers to come to the party. Again, there was extensive damage to their property, estimated to be about $3 million. A year later, some of them are still waiting to get support through what has been promised to repair fire affected infrastructure.

If agriculture is going to reach its goal—and the government has aligned itself to the National Farmers Federation's goal of seeing a $100 billion contribution by agriculture by 2030—the government will need to start showing some leadership. The government's neglect to legislate, in this case, the revised definition of 'sheep' and 'lamb'; the wine-labelling bill that we'll be debating shortly; and the streamlining administration bill highlights a disregard for the sector and also a disregard for the importance of research and development and the RDCs.

The agriculture minister has said that the RDCs are on notice. He has commissioned reports and held inquiries into the RDCs, but there hasn't been much as a result of all that talk. The minister's $2.6 million review into RDCs found that they're not fit for purpose. That report was delivered before the 2019 election. Then, in September last year, the government undertook a review—another review—into modernising the RDC system. That produced two discussion papers—hallelujah for that! Two discussion papers! They culminated in the announcement of the National Agricultural Innovation Agenda on 1 September 2020.

Part of this agenda involves the development of a national agricultural innovation strategy, which won't be announced until the first half of next year. Just like the elusive agricultural workers strategy, it seems the innovation strategy will be remarkably and similarly elusive. And while we wait for this third-term government to deliver its strategies, on 1 October the minister announced Agriculture Innovation Australia. According to the minister's media release there is $1.3 million committed to kickstart investment in AIA, which is intended to deliver:

… cross-industry research, to leverage private sector investment and to target transformational innovation.

These are all fine words; let's see if they actually get anywhere.

At estimates, Labor senators sought clarity about AIA's mandate. However, they were unable to establish anything substantive. It seems there's a lot of money going out the door to support AIA. Whether or not this will lead to anything significant, concrete or tangible we'll wait to see. The RDCs were also unable to tell us what AIA will do that existing RDCs should not already be doing. What's clear is that the individual RDCs will be buying into the AIA, using levy-payer dollars, more than likely to conduct research they should have been undertaking themselves. The effectiveness of the AIA remains to be seen. However, it seems very unlikely it will successfully remedy the inefficiencies of existing RDCs.

I just want to remark on this fact: in Victoria, against this backdrop and in the absence of government leadership, we've seen the ag sector in Australia take the lead on innovation and innovation investment. With the New South Wales-Victoria border reopening the other week, I was able to visit regional Victoria, as I indicated earlier, with senator for Victoria Raff Ciccone. We went to Gippsland Jersey to hear about their plans to expand and build their presence in the Australian dairy industry. They showed us how much they've been concentrating on clean and sustainable farming by helping and supporting other local dairy farmers. They have big plans to diversify their product range and have been displaying quite actively and talking about that through social media. I commend them on that, and thank them for their time.

In Heyfield I visited Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, Australia's largest hardwood manufacturer. I undertook a tour of their factory and also saw some of the ways that they're changing their production processes with the implementation of fairly sophisticated production techniques that are allowing them to undertake quite significant and different projects along the way. I was very grateful for the time there. We had the opportunity to meet with the CFMMEU to hear about how innovation on the plant floor is helping to not only improve worker safety but, importantly, improve workers' employability and the sustainability of their jobs longer terms. In just a couple of weeks I have been able to meet with all these stakeholders, and I'm very grateful for their time and their advice and to have had the ability to learn from them and in particular to hear some of the issues they care deeply about that affect their sector.

The thing that did strike me is that there is a concern about a lack of leadership being displayed by the government. Again, any question time you can hear the minister for agriculture go to the dispatch box and rattle off announcements. He'll rattle off amounts of money that they're prepared to spend. It all sounds great, but people are waiting for the actual delivery. There is, I suspect, a degree of frustration creeping in over the fact that the government will make announcements—they announce legislation, table it and it takes a year to get here for debate—and then there's not much being seen by way of delivery.

We had the meeting bringing together the ag ministers from across the country held last week. It was the first time, according to those state and territory ministers, that they were going to have a substantive meeting in 10 months. Those ministers actually released a letter expressing their frustration at the lack of any substantive policy agenda that was going to be debated through AGMIN. I imagine that there'll be some within government ranks who'll say, 'It was just one political side lobbing a criticism against another.' This wasn't the case because even state governments that are not of the same political persuasion as us are also saying that AGMIN should be used in a much more comprehensive way to deal with the issues of the sector—for example, the pressures that are being put on the sector as a result of the need to diversify trade given the current disputes that are going. When you look at the major exports in agriculture—wool, barley, wine, beef and seafood—they're all affected at the moment with respect to some of the disputes that we're having with one particular destination. We don't need to necessarily name it. I think everyone's big enough and wise enough to know who I'm referring to there. The pressure for trade diversification is well and truly on, but I wonder whether or not this agriculture minister gets it.

At the Rural Press Club on 8 October, in response to questioning about what might be done on diversification, his big contribution was to blame exporters and say: 'These are decisions that are made by companies. They're not made by us as a government. We just open up the markets. It's the companies' issue whether or not they decide to put all their eggs in the one basket.' We've seen in the last few weeks a very furtive attempt by him and the trade minister to suggest that they're in these crisis talks with the sector to undertake trade diversification. But that's a really different story to just a few weeks earlier, when he was trying to blame individual exporters. When the government make a trade agreement, they're there to claim the credit and to claim how they've opened up these markets and have encouraged people and companies to export—and they absolutely should do that. But they're not there when help is needed or they scramble to respond.

As I said, you'd expect the agriculture minister we have would be a bit wiser. But there's a thing with this agriculture minister. He loves to talk tough. He loves to show that he's across his area. He loves to show that he's sticking up for it and he's taking a tough stand. But he doesn't necessarily show that toughness can also be paired with wisdom and that you might want to think before you speak, particularly in respect of this issue. Certainly this minister, who I've criticised in this place for not being across the detail, for example, of the Biosecurity Act, which he initially thought the department did not administer in respect of people and said that it didn't cover human health—big news to a lot of Australians!— should really demonstrate that he's taken the time to know the acts that are actually within the purview of his own department. Maybe we'll see some action on that front in a concrete sense.

And I come back to this point: he makes a lot of claims, suggests that there's a lot of action, throws out the figures, throws out the numbers, and where is it all getting to? That has prompted me—and I flagged this with the clerks—to move a second reading amendment:

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 condemns the Government for its failed record in assisting drought-affected farmers and communities".

That amendment has been seconded by the member for Fenner.

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