Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This would be laughable if it weren't so serious. The Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024 is based on an unfair and completely flawed principle that goes against the ethos of encouraging entrepreneurship, small business and primary production. That unfair and flawed principle is that the business owner, in this case a farmer, must pay for the costs of their competitor importing products into the country to compete against them. What sort of government does this to people? These are people who are out there trying to create wealth, jobs, economic activity and, in this case, fantastic Australian-grown food.

What's in these bills? The government's package of three bills seeks to impose a new biosecurity protection levy to be payable by certain producers in the agricultural, fishery and forestry industries in Australia. Two of these bills seek to implement a biosecurity protection levy or charge to be inflicted on Australian farmers to pay for biosecurity activities which are undertaken by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The third bill, the Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies and Charges Collection Bill 2024, will enable the collection of the levy, and the biosecurity protection levy will use each industry's proportional share of total gross value of production. For example, if the GVP—gross value of productions—of an industry sector is five per cent of the total GVP that it produces, that sector would collectively contribute five per cent of the biosecurity protection levy's revenue. Commencing on 1 July this year, Labor's biosecurity protection levy is expected to collect around $50 million per year over the next three years.

The principle of making farmers who are already doing it tough pay for their competitors to import produce into the country to compete against them is just another example of this government being anti agriculture. I ask this Labor government: what do you hate about farmers so much? They're doing a fantastic job out there in electorates such as mine, and it's really difficult work. They don't need the government working against them, but the government are working against them. I'll give you some examples.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan was developed over a long period of time. Both sides gave a bit, and I can tell you that my electorate gave more than a bit. A huge amount of irrigation water was removed from production to be put into an environmental account, and that takes wealth away from communities because, when water isn't being used to grow commodities, all the people employed in the production or sale of those commodities don't get employed anymore. That's had a huge impact on my electorate of Nicholls, in the wonderful Goulburn Valley. But this government has decided that the deal that was already done, which saw a huge amount of water taken away from productive use in my electorate, doesn't go far enough, and now it wants to come after another 450 gigalitres.

This government has torn up the agriculture visa program that the previous coalition government put together, which was welcomed by people in my electorate, particularly those within the dairy industry. Wonderful families came from overseas to work on our farms and in our agriculture industries, and the ag visa gave them a path to permanency. It was welcomed not only by the agricultural businesses and the farms but also by the communities that nurture these people who come from overseas. This has led to an overreliance on the PALM scheme, from the Pacific islands, even though the scheme can't fill the estimated agriculture workforce shortfall of 172,000 people.

Then there's the ideological and reckless decision to ban the live sheep export industry. I don't have live sheep export in my electorate, but I did go on a fact-finding mission to Western Australia to talk to people. Yes, I'm a Nationals member and, yes, I believe in regional industries, but I had an open mind about live export. What I found was an industry that has seriously cleaned itself up over the last 15 years and put in some of the most incredible animal health measures to look after the sheep that get shipped overseas. I met with a vet working for one of the companies and I met the stock people. I saw a ship being loaded. I talked to the people out in those regional Western Australian communities. The thing about this one is that there is a market for live sheep in the Middle East, and we've got to accept that. If we're in it, then the live sheep that come from Australia get treated well, with the world's best animal welfare standards. If we get out of it, they'll source the live sheep from somewhere that doesn't have our animal standards. The activists are fine with sheep being mistreated, just as long as they're not Australian sheep. I think it's an ideological decision and it's ridiculous.

There's been billions cut from regional funding. Whole programs have been scrapped—infrastructure projects that are necessary for regional communities. For a place like Nicholls, which I represent, road projects are essential for getting produce from farms to processing facilities or to the port of Melbourne, where it can be exported. The projects that the previous government set up have now had the money withdrawn from them—for example, the attack on the pharmacy sector, particularly the regional pharmacy sector. You might wonder how that relates to agriculture. These agricultural industries only exist when there are communities and community infrastructure there to sustain regional communities.

Now, on top of all of that, the Labor government is targeting hardworking Australian farming families, people who have to get up early—a lot earlier, I would suggest, than a lot of people who work in this place, not to denigrate them—to milk cows, pick fruit, prune orchards and put grain into the ground. Labor wants those families, who are already doing it really tough, to pay a levy to fund biosecurity—to fund the people who are going to bring stuff into the country to compete against them. The overseas competitors will import produce that carries biosecurity risks, so they should be the ones to pay. If they want to import stuff into this country that's fine, but they should be the ones to pay for that.

I want to bring up the fact that this is being debated here in the Federation Chamber. This is not to denigrate the Federation Chamber or you, Deputy Speaker Young, but my understanding from talking to colleagues is that controversial legislation—important legislation such as this—is debated in the House. I think the fact that this has been put in the Federation Chamber indicates just how little Labor thinks of agriculture and controversial agricultural bills that should be debated in the House of Representatives. It's up here, out of sight and out of mind, like agriculture itself.

I would like to suggest to all the Labor MPs listening to this, including my friend the member for Tangney here: next time you go to Aussies, the trough or the Members and Guests Dining Room and get yourself a plate of food, before you grab your knife and fork and hoe in, have a look at what's on that plate. Have a look at what's on the plate and think about what people went through to get that onto your plate. There's salad, meat and fish. For all of these products, and the dairy products in particular, the amount of work, capital, labour and risk—I would argue there's more risk than any other business—that Australian people have gone through to put that on your plate is significant. The people who do that need a government that's going to work with them, not against them. This is an example of a government working against them. I want everyone who goes to the trough today and gets one of those good salads to have a think about what people went through to get that produce onto the plate.

I worked in agriculture for a number of years before coming into this place, and this is what it's like: really long hours and really hard work. It's hard, physical work, but it's also tough mentally, and that's because there are a lot of seasonal and climatic pressures. There's a lot of price variability and a lot of market insecurity. A lot of people ask, 'Why would you do it?' We do it because we believe in Australian agriculture and we believe that it is a noble profession. Putting food on the table of people around Australia and the world is one of the most satisfying and noble things you can do with your life. Yes, farmers want to make money, of course. The profit motive is there, as it should be. But the reason people put up with some of the things they have to put up with is that they love doing it and they believe in it. Farming is in people's blood, and you don't have to have been born into a farm for it to be in your blood. There are people who were born in cities and who go out and work on farms because they want to do that noble thing for their fellow Australians, which is produce food.

What you don't need on top of all the things I just described—the long hours, hard work, seasonal and climatic pressures, price variability, and market insecurity—is your government working against you. You don't need that. The perverse outcome we get from this is a fresh food tax. This is just another tax. Farmers have got to pass on all of these costs, and this is just one of the many costs. State and federal governments always look at farmers, or often look at farmers—the previous coalition government was an exception. I wasn't in this place then, but I was working with agriculturalists, and it was a good government for farmers. They haven't got a good government now. But the state and federal governments look at farmers and say: 'How can we clip the ticket on the way through? How can we get a little bit more money from them?' They always say it's a little bit. The member for Moreton was saying it was only little bit. But every government is in there trying to get a little bit, and it makes it more difficult to run a farming business.

Farmers then say, 'If we can, we've got to try to pass this cost on.' And then it becomes a cost-of-living pressure because food becomes more expensive, becomes more difficult to grow and becomes unprofitable in some cases, and we lose farmers. If we lose farmers we'll have less supply. If we have less supply—and I saw this in the dairy industry in my electorate—then the price will go up, and people will pay at the checkout.

I'm sure a lot of the conversation and the debate, particularly from the Labor Party, will be about needing stronger biosecurity. I know that. I worked as an agronomist, I worked in pests and diseases in orchard crops and I've seen the ravages. For example, there's a disease called fire blight, which affects apple crops in the United States, and it could decimate the pear industry. If the pear industry were decimated in my region, that would be a terrible outcome, because the Goulburn Valley produces over 95 per cent of Australia's pears. So, yes, we need a strong biosecurity regime and we need to keep out fire blight, foot-and-mouth, and all of these things. But this debate is about who pays.

There was a much better solution that was proposed by the previous government: a container levy. The principle of that was you make the importer, the person who wants to come in and compete, pay. We're a trading nation—I'm not arguing for protectionism—and if we want to send our goods overseas, we've got to wear the fact that people are going to try to import agricultural goods into this place to compete. But our system said to the Australian farmer, 'We're going to make the person who's importing the food pay.' This new piece of legislation makes the farmer pay a proportion of that. That is a deeply unfair and flawed principle.

The then agriculture minister, the Leader of the Nationals, announced this policy prior to the last election. It was going to be a container levy on the importers. That would have been a fairer outcome; it would have meant that if people who were competing against our Australian farmers and who wanted to make a profit out of bringing stuff into Australia—and good luck to them; I'm about the free market and a market economy—were posing a biosecurity risk then they were the ones who had to pay for it. That sounds fair. This policy is another attack on agriculture and regional Australia by a government that just doesn't seem to understand life beyond the suburbs. This Labor government sees primary production as a cash cow to exploit rather than an industry to nurture.

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