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

I can make it clear that both the Nationals and Liberals will be opposing the tax in the Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024 and related bills. This is a tax. What we are doing is going to tax Australian farmers to pay for the biosecurity cost of their foreign competitors bringing product to Australia to compete with Australian farmers on the supermarket shelves in this country. In what parallel universe does a government charge its own farmers to help their foreign competitors bring product to this country? It makes no sense. This is a direct assault not just on Australian agriculture but on Australian families. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, when food has already gone up over nine per cent, this government is going to make Australian produce even more expensive. They are going to tax farmers for that biosecurity cost.

Our biosecurity system needs to be robust. On our side we have a proud history. The former coalition government spent over $1 billion in strengthening those borders to make sure that we didn't just protect Australian agricultural production systems but protected the natural environment as well. But what we need to do is move to a model that actually charges those that pose the biosecurity risks to this country. What we are saying is that there are risks posed by foreign importers that don't have the biosecurity standards that we have and that have many of the pests and diseases that we don't have in this country. They can bring their product to this country and the good old Australian farmer's going to pay for it, but that has to be passed on. That has to be passed on to the Australian consumer.

Australian farmers already pay over $500 million a year in levies. There are levies for research and development but also for biosecurity support, particularly in cases of incursion, to Plant Health Australia and Animal Health Australia. Part of that $500 million already goes to a biosecurity system, and this government is now going to ask them to pay for someone else's. The government should understand that, when we export—and we export $80 billion worth of agricultural production around the world—to other countries and those products need to be processed through the border, we pay for that. We pay for the cost and the risk that we pose to their biosecurity system. But for some reason this government has decided to charge Australian farmers.

The sad indictment on this is that the last order I gave as the Australian agriculture minister in March 2022 was for the department to finalise the consultation process with importers about a cost-recovery model. That cost-recovery model would mean that they would pay a container levy of somewhere between $20 and $25 a container. That's not about us trying to make a profit out of importers. Under WTO rules we had to be able to clearly identify the cost imposed by biosecurity at our borders in processing those containers and, again, a different cost-recovery model for bulk commodities.

In fact, in the last consultation piece we had with industry they were quite eager for this. They wanted an efficient biosecurity system at the border because we were holding them up. They needed to have the funds there to be able to fund that biosecurity system. Otherwise, having these boats sitting out there, bobbing around, waiting to be unloaded and reloaded, costs them about $140,000 a day. They were quite eager to see that the department of agriculture had an efficient, properly funded biosecurity system at the border.

It should be funded by the simple principle that those who pose the risk should pay the cost. But this government has deviated from that and is now going to charge Australian farmers. It was so bad. The fact was that the incoming minister would have had an incoming minister's brief from the department saying that this was the model—a cost-recovery model—that was ready to be implemented. In fact, it was to be implemented in MYEFO in December 2022, straight after the election. But the new minister has obviously gone against the brief of the work that the department had done and has come up with his own ideological view of charging Australian farmers on their research and development levies. With that $500 million a year, he came up with the grand idea of a 10 per cent levy on those levies every year. That's double dipping, because in that $500 million are biosecurity costs that farmers are already charged.

Instead of this government deciding to blow this all up and put the cost back on Australian farmers, there was a sensible alternative that would not mean that farmers would have to pass this on and, in fact, drive up the cost at the check-out. The government, in its wisdom, has now even moved away from the path they were going to go down, of the 10 per cent levy on the R&D levies. Now they're going on the gross value of each commodity over a three-year period, meaning some commodities will pay a significant amount and some commodities will pay nothing. It should come back to the simple principle that those who pose the risk pay the cost of the biosecurity. This is a principle that this government has thrown out for reasons no-one can understand, in any ideological view, other than that they don't understand agriculture.

Australian farmers have felt under siege from this government from the very beginning. The Prime Minister said that no-one will be left behind and everyone will get a go. Well, unfortunately, if you live in regional Australia you've missed out. In their first budget they not only changed the biosecurity levy but took $27 billion worth of infrastructure out of it. Roads and rail are important arterial infrastructure that get product from a paddock to your plate or, importantly, to a port that pays the bills.

They banned the live export of sheep, with no scientific or economic reason, and walked away from an industry that creates 3,000 jobs in Western Australia. They removed nearly $100 million of export income to this country with the stroke of a pen—without even having the courage of their conviction to turn up and face the Western Australian farmers and export industry, to look them in the eye and tell them, 'These are the scientific and economic reasons why.' But they don't have reasons. We have the best animal welfare standards in the world. Sadly, what will happen is that that decision will have a perverse animal welfare outcome—not here in Australia, but around the world—because the countries that will take up that market, that we are signing ourselves out of, don't have the animal welfare standards that we do. So you will see a perverse outcome.

We've also seen the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They've reshaped the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. They've walked away from the very plan that they implemented. They're now changing the rules to take an extra 450 gigalitres of water. They've taken away the restrictions that we put in place around water buybacks. Water buybacks don't hurt the farmer; they hurt the small community that's left behind: the machinery dealer, the pump shop, the agronomist, right through to the cafe, because the economic value of that community is lost. But they've taken away 450 gigalitres of extra water—that's a Sydney Harbour every year. They've taken away the tools that farmers need to produce our food and fibre, taken away our food security and driven up your food prices.

Then it gets worse, looking at the vehicle emissions that this government wants to bring in, taking away the tools of trade that we need in regional Australia. The only electric ute available is $92,000, but the big kicker is that it can only go 150 kilometres. Now, where I come from, on some properties they wouldn't even get to the front gate before they'd need to recharge. This is the insanity of what this government is imposing on Australian agriculture. But this biosecurity tax, this fresh food tax, is also a kicker to Australian families. I implore the government to go back to the drawing board. The work has been done. The department has done the consultation. We can introduce a container levy on importers, we can get a cost recovery model on bulk importers and we can make sure that there is a properly funded biosecurity model in this country.

Sadly, another big kicker is that the money they're raising out of this doesn't even go back into biosecurity programs but to consolidated revenue. So, how does Australian agriculture have confidence that this government is going to continue the legacy that we put in place of over $1 billion for protecting our biosecurity borders? And that was with technology, with boots on the ground, with dogs on the ground—making sure that, whether it was a container or people through a port, the protections were put in place to protect our environment and protect Australian agriculture. Whatever reason it was that this government changed their mind, it is one they can't explain, because they still haven't completed the model on how they're going to charge this and how much will be paid.

The government has an opportunity to pause, plan and go back and get this right. If they don't, this cost will be passed on to the Australian consumer. It is something that any government would think differently about if they understood the pressures Australian families are under every day. Families are going to the supermarket every week and making real-life decisions about what they take off the shelf and what they put back on it because they can't afford it. All we will do today is drive up that cost of fresh produce at those supermarkets, where those families, when they walk in there, will make those tough decisions, because it will be more expensive, when it didn't need to be—a senseless decision by a government that doesn't understand agriculture. And when you don't understand agriculture, every Australian pays.

And every Australian is about to pay for the actions of this government, which has ignored the calls of over 50 industry groups that had the temerity to write to the Prime Minister and implore him to go back to the model that was proposed before the election and that importers were happy with and exporters were happy with, and we had a properly funded biosecurity system. Instead, in pure arrogance, they have ignored farmers, ignored farming groups. But one thing this government has done for Australian agriculture that I must congratulate the minister for is that finally one minister has united all industry groups in their hatred of one force: the Albanese government. That is something no other agriculture minister has been able to do—to get agreement amongst industry groups—but finally the Albanese government has done that.

The coalition cannot support this bill in the cost-of-living crisis we find ourselves in. It doesn't make sense when there are sensible alternatives to be had—ones that were going to be implemented by the former government and ones that this government, if it had the courage of its convictions and if it understood the pressures it was putting on families, would change its mind about and go back to a path of charging those that pose the biosecurity risks to this country, not Australian farmers.

I move a second reading amendment to the Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies and Charges Collection Bill 2024:

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

"the House declines to give the bill a second reading and:

(1) criticises the Government for attempting to impose this new tax on Australian farmers and the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sector, right in the middle of a cost of living and workforce shortage crisis;

(2) notes its alarm that the proposed Biosecurity Protection Levy will push up the costs of fresh food for Australian families, at a time when they can afford it least;

(3) expresses its profound concern that under the terms of the Biosecurity Protection Levy, Australian farmers will be forced to pay for the biosecurity risks of their international competitors to bring their products into this country;

(4) further criticises the Government for the ongoing mismanagement, confusion and lack of detail which has characterised the Biosecurity Protection Levy since its initial announcement in the May 2023 Budget, and the subsequent restructure that was announced in February 2024;

(5) recognises that the proposed Biosecurity Protection Levy is widely and strongly opposed by farmers, producers, stakeholders, and industry groups across the agriculture sector; and

(6) calls on the Government to ensure a sustainable funding model for biosecurity by progressing and establishing an importer container levy, as recommended by the independent Craik Review".

I thank the House.

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