David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's rare that you get such a united front in the agricultural world, but what we are seeing now is a universal rejection from the whole industry of the concept which is embodied in this legislation. The Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024 is basically a second GST on primary production. Let me be clear. It is a second GST. It is a thought bubble which will be counterproductive. It's based on a false premise that primary producers don't already provide funds to support biosecurity in their industry and in the broader food and fibre production of our country.

The attitude behind the bill is there in black and white when you look at the comments. When the proposed bill was described in one of the departmental responses to consultation and analysis of the impacts, they said the levy is set to be negligible to consumers, given the value of what they pay at retail. Hello? It is not going to be retail alone where things hit trouble. The GST value of 10 per cent will be added onto existing levies. The producers have no say. The representative bodies have no say. There's no detail of exactly what these charges will be. People down the value chain of agricultural production, such as the administrators of saleyards and brokers buying and selling on-farm produce or delivered farm produce—a lot of them are just realising that they're going to be the ones collecting it.

The cost recovery system is applied in many other industries, but the same principle applies. The government provides these sorts of services—the protection of the nation, the protection of our food and the protection of our health. These are government responsibilities. Already, there are many industry levies that the industry bodies and the producers have a say in, and they are already contributing to their own biosecurity. We did provide a policy that the biosecurity levies for importers of food and other products should be increased—because current producers in Australia pay their industry levies and they also pay on the arrival of their product in other countries. But, instead, our producers are going to be contributing the vast majority of the fees that should be levied on people bringing risky product into Australia. This is a double whammy for our producers—paying in the country that they're going to as well as in their own country. It's just bizarre that someone thought this was fair and equitable!

On collecting it: as I mentioned, there are 7,000 agents involved in livestock saleyards. There are brokers and a huge numbers of collection points, and many of these agents will be drawn into the collection nightmare. Nothing is safe. It will apply to grain, wool, cotton, hydroponic food production and forestry products—even little old fungi and algae get a mention. It will be on all horticultural produce; wild-harvested livestock and flora; hunting and trapping; grape production and viticulture; fishing—you name it. It will be on lambs, goats, beef cattle and dairy—you name it.

So I won't be supporting the bill. We all understand the importance of biosecurity, but we have a system in place that is fair and equitable. As the former speaker mentioned, we pay for local land services. These are state administered bodies which also look after biosecurity. We can't expect the primary producers of the food and fibre that feed and clothe our nation and our neighbours to continually carry the can. Once this is there, we'll get a lot of low-margin food and fibre production, which may have a margin of only 10 per cent or lower, depending on what the commodity prices are, coming in. It's not like when you're a salary earner, and you know what you get for every hour you work. There are so many variables in the production of primary products: the weather is variable, and there are fertiliser costs, energy costs to harvest and to sow, and chemical bills for protection. All those things are basically out of your control. So if someone comes along and says, 'You're going to get another 10 per cent on the existing value of your product,' it might mean that harvest or that amount of protein won't make a profit for that person.

I think the government should go back to the drawing board and make sure that the industry bodies do what they're doing. And if the departments are going to recover their costs from the industries that they're supporting then why do those departments get an appropriation in the budgets at state and federal levels? They're not driving any efficiencies themselves. Leave agriculture—food and fibre production, viticulture, horticulture, fishing, seafood and all of those things, those primary products that are already doing their fair share—alone.

We need to put a levy on the containers that are coming into this country which are competing against our food and fibre production. There's a misguided concern by some people that this is against World Trade Organization and trade agreements. That is wrong; if you're applying biosecurity levies like that, as long as you're not using them to make a profit, it's allowable under free-trade agreement deals. So there's no excuse; they need to go back to the drawing board and stop cooking the goose that laid the golden egg, which is primary production.

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