Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

If you ever needed an example of the disconnect between the Australian Labor Party and regional Australia, this bill, the Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024, is it. My National Party colleagues have queued up to speak on this bill because we have rarely seen a bill unite our farming sector like this one does. It is not positive for Labor. The peak bodies in agriculture and horticulture, as well as farmers in my electorate of Mallee, oppose this levy—specifically the element of hitting farmers for the costs brought into their farm gate by importers. Can you imagine, Deputy Speaker Sharkie, asking workers to pay a levy to prevent labour hire companies or employers taking work away from their workers? The unions would be up in arms, filling the galleries. This is no different.

National Farmers Federation president and Mallee resident David Jochinke said:

The agricultural sector, along with supply chain participants, have overwhelmingly objected to the levy—

a position ratified by the NFF Members' Council in October. In my home state of Victoria, the Victorian Farmers Federation said:

With the levy set to be implemented on 1 July this year, farmers are apprehensive about the additional financial burden and the lack of detailed information on how the levy funds will directly enhance biosecurity measures on farms.

The New South Wales Farmers Association holds a similar view, as do the farm organisations in every state and territory that complained, during the submissions process, of a complete lack of consultation and a lack of transparency on how the funds would be spent, and claims that producers would be unfairly slugged. More than 50 agricultural representative groups signed a joint letter to Prime Minister Albanese, united in their opposition, including Grain Producers Australia, Cattle Australia, Sheep Producers Australia, WoolProducers Australia, the Red Meat Advisory Council, Australian Grape and Wine, the Australian Table Grape Association, AUSVEG and many more. Grain Producers Australia described the levy as 'a fundamentally flawed policy proposal which fails to deliver better biosecurity protections'. They said:

It also undermines fundamental trust and confidence in the long-standing partnerships created through existing compulsory levies.

GrainGrowers chair Rhys Turton said:

The discussion to date has all been around revenue raising, but industry needs to understand how government will deliver better biosecurity outcomes in a rapidly changing environment …

The independent Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Australian National University proposed an alternative policy approach—precisely what we in the National Party have been calling for:

The first is to increase charges for those who create the biosecurity threats, such as importers and travellers, and the second is to further fund biosecurity protection through general revenue, given that the benefits flow to all Australians.

Hear, hear! The Tax and Transfer Policy Institute also highlighted:

Normally taxes would be applied on net proceeds, where production costs have first been subtracted from gross revenues.

Speaking of experts, the Productivity Commission in its report on industry levies recently said:

Funding via general revenue is generally cheaper than funding via industry levies. For primary producers that currently do not have a levy, there will be a clear increase in administrative costs.

Citrus Australia CEO Nathan Hancock, who is also a Mallee resident, said:

… while our stance remains a firm no to this tax, there are still key elements missing in the Minister's statements, firstly that the funding raised through these measures is not hypothecated and secondly that industry still doesn't have a say on how the money is spent …

Probably most frustrating for the agriculture industry as a whole is that the recent statements continue to ignore calls for other sectors to contribute to biosecurity incursion responses, for example through a container levy.

The CEO of Summerfruit Australia, Trevor Ranford, who received the 2022 Australian Biosecurity Award, industry category—you'd think he'd know a thing or two—has called on Prime Minister Albanese to 'dump' what he describes as 'an insidious burden on Australian farmers'. Mr Ranford says:

All primary producers have been paying their share for Australian biosecurity for the past 26 years, since the Plant Health Australia and Animal Health Australia organisations were formed. This new tax is nothing more than 'double dipping' by the government to try and improve their budget bottom line.

Even the freight industry is against this levy, with the Freight & Trade Alliance and the Australian Peak Shippers Association presenting a position paper which proposed that Labor not proceed with its levy against producers but instead change the full import declarations arrangement to cover the cost. In a joint statement, they say:

We well and truly understand the need to protect against biosecurity risks and would be prepared to pay an additional levy or cost recovery fee on the proviso that an appropriate proportion directly translates to commensurate improved and immediate trade facilitation measures.

Given all those opposed to the levy, my question to the minister is: which peak body or grower group supports this levy? Where is the demonstrated widespread support? I would like him to report this back to the House.

The Nationals are listening to our primary producers. We committed soon after the budget that a future coalition government would abolish this levy. Labor's fresh food tax doesn't hit farmers in a vacuum. It comes after drier than expected years have halted very positive momentum towards a united target for primary industry in government, set under the former coalition government, to reach $100 billion in farmgate value by 2030. As momentum falters, Labor is slugging the industry with a $153 million tax over three years to 2027-28 to pay for the biosecurity risks farmers' foreign competitors bring into the country.

Our farmers work very hard in an unpredictable environment, but Labor's heavy-handed fresh food tax puts the handbrake on Mallee farmers' productivity by increasing their operating costs. Farmers will wear this cost and, consequently, Australian families will pay that cost through higher prices at the supermarket checkout. That's just what we need in a cost-of-living crisis! Indeed, Labor has kept farmers in the dark about the exact costs and the rate at which farmers will be taxed. We are expected to trust a government that wilfully breaks its promises to show us the costs when the regulations are produced. Labor's obfuscation has created more unnecessary confusion and anxiety. By contrast, the coalition government was well on its way to imposing the biosecurity cost where it was being created through an importer container levy.

The Craik review recommended such a levy to fund Australia's biosecurity levy system, recommending that funding should be increased by implementing a per-container levy on incoming shipping containers of $10 per 20-foot equivalent unit and a levy of $5 on incoming air containers. The proposed cost recovery on items of individual value of $1,000 or less would mean each item attracts a cost of around 40c. That's less than a third of the cost of a postage stamp. What if, whatever the levy rate ends up becoming—because the bill is before us, and maybe it will be decided by regulation—instead of hitting farmers with this levy, perhaps consumers are instead asked to pay with 50c instead of 40c on low-value imports? What about 75c or a dollar, perhaps? It's still short of the cost of a postage stamp. I think consumers would wear that cost, knowing that in doing so they are protecting our farmers from khapra beetle, varroa mite, marmorated stink bug or other risks they are bringing in from buying goods from overseas.

Speaking of which, this bill comes in the context of major biosecurity loss for Australia and a big scare in recent years. We lost the battle against varroa mite, and there isn't time left for me to trace the history on that, but now under Labor we have shifted from an eradication to a management setting on the outbreak that came through the Port of Newcastle. In addition, we had a close call on both foot-and-mouth and lumpy skin disease, with outbreaks in Indonesia that took considerable vigilance. I also recall it took the shadow minister for agriculture, David Littleproud, badgering Minister Watt and federal Labor to impose stronger travel precautions, particularly coming from Bali, which ultimately detected—among other things—a Darwin traveller fined thousands of dollars for failing to declare fast food brought back from Bali.

We also have a mandatory electronic sheep traceability system being set up nationwide, modelled on Victorian arrangements. This has been so mishandled by the Albanese Labor government that WoolProducers Australia have withdrawn their support after calls for many months for an equitable funding arrangement. In short, the industry expected government to fund its fair share and it is not. WoolProducers CEO Jo Hall said:

While the funding commitment that has been received to date from state and federal governments is welcomed, it is still a long way short of the required financial assistance.

And there's the rub. When Labor look at farmers, they see a cash cow. Labor's disconnect with country Australia means they don't see the cost of production, the struggle farmers go through, the compliance costs and the huge cost burdens. They don't even get that farmers' competitors often have a lot more government support. It is not a level playing field, and our farmers do a mighty job in our great exporting nation. Labor looks at all the primary production land in Australia and sees an opportunity to rob the regions to buy votes in the city. It has been in Labor's DNA for some time now, as opposed to generations ago, when Labor actually got it. They like to dust off their 'Country Labor' label, but it's an oxymoron now. There's no country left in Labor, and that's a fact.

Let's take an example: buying back water from irrigators for environmental benefits. The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has on average, since its inception, carried over 32 per cent—call it one-third—of its water every year. In other words, it hasn't used it. In the 2022-23 year, it carried over more than half—51 per cent. Labor's solution is to buy even more water to carry over every year, to mothball farms and to go away from patchwork quilted, irrigated and dry farms. Now it's going to be 'spot the farmer'. It really beggars belief, and it's all so Labor can hang on to the electorate of Boothby in Adelaide, because they figure that green concerns might sway the vote there.

The former coalition government introduced the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme, but Labor is undermining it by imposing by a 30-hour week, whether or not there is a crop and whether there's rain, hail or shine. Yet again, Labor is looking at workers through its union goggles and hasn't got a shred of understanding of the realities in regional Australia and for our farmers. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry highlighted, in late January, that the number of workers in farm labour fell 29,300 in the last three reporting years, and that was a loss of overseas contracted workers. The largest horticultural farms—and we have some big ones in my electorate of Mallee—accounted for almost all of the horticultural workforce losses. The agricultural visa, initiated by the Nationals and created by the coalition government, was meant to help with the huge horticultural workforce shortage, and, after it was undermined by elements in the union movement, we've finally got 1,000 workers coming in from Vietnam under the ag visa.

Thankfully, the coalition's PALM initiative stepped into the breach, with the department estimating in late January that, in the 2019-20 reporting year, 58 per cent of the horticulture workforce comprised PALM workers, and that became 82 per cent in 2021-22. PALM workers are not ideal for every context in agriculture and horticulture, and I urge the government to work diplomatically with our nearest neighbours to undo the badmouthing of the ag visa by union representatives and to broaden the labour pool through the farm workers that regional Australia desperately needs. Time will prevent me from speaking about Labor's pay-off to their union masters and about the industrial relations laws that have passed this place and that are no help to the agricultural sector.

In conclusion, this biosecurity levy is yet another blow for our farmers, and it yet again shows that Labor is robbing the regions to buy votes in the city.

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