Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Industrial Chemicals (Notification and Assessment) Amendment Bill 2012. The coalition will not be opposing this bill. This bill amends the Industrial Chemicals (Notification and Assessment) Act 1989, which established and regulates a system that assesses industrial chemicals used within Australia for their health and environmental impacts before they are released for use. NICNAS also assess chemicals that were already in use in Australia prior to the scheme's implementation on a priority basis.

The bill before the parliament seeks to amend that scheme, and there are two specific amendments contained within this bill which I would like to touch on briefly. The first is the registration structure. The major amendment contained within this bill is the changes being made to the registration structure. NICNAS operates on a full cost recovery structure, which means that the cost to administer the industrial chemical scheme is recouped via charges imposed on entities that introduce industrial chemicals into Australia. NICNAS recently reviewed its cost recovery arrangements in accordance with the Australian Government Cost Recovery Guidelines. Those guidelines were originally introduced in 2002 to improve transparency and accountability of cost recovery arrangements. This review resulted in the NICNAS Cost Recovery Impact Statement 2012-13 to 2015-16, which was released earlier this year and agreed to by the government in July. The proposed changes to the NICNAS registration structure were foreshadowed in the NICNAS Cost Recovery Impact Statement. The annual registration charges fund the lion's share of NICNAS's regulatory activities.

This bill will amend the current three-tier registration structure for NICNAS into a four-tier structure. The structure will begin in the 2013-14 financial year. A number of alternative fee structures were canvassed during the development of the NICNAS CRIS. However, the four-tier option was deemed the most appropriate during the review. The effect of this amendment will see 2,500 low-value introducers pay a lower registration fee, thereby lowering the barriers to entry for those small businesses, with approximately the top 400 chemical introducers paying more. It is my understanding that amendments to the regulations will be introduced separately in the near future to amend the registration fees associated with the changed tiers. The coalition will be ensuring the proper scrutiny of these amendments to the registration fees when these regulations are introduced into the parliament.

The second part of the bill relates to the Rotterdam convention fee. The bill also introduces a small fee to recover the cost of importing hazardous chemicals listed under the Rotterdam convention. Previously this cost was levied across all chargeable organisations, but it will now be recovered directly from the applicants. I am informed that there are fewer than 10 of these applications each year. There are some other consequential amendments. The bill makes a number of minor amendments to remove redundant fees that are no longer applicable and improve the consistency with other regulations by standardising language. For example, 'material safety data sheets' have been renamed 'safety data sheets', and the changes in this bill reflect that. These changes do not impact on the industrial chemicals industry but rather improve regulatory consistency.

I need to touch briefly on the better regulation ministerial partnership that was announced on 8 September 2011 by the Minister for Health and Ageing and the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. This partnership was set up to review and evaluate the operation of NICNAS to improve competitiveness of the Australian chemicals industry, as well as health and environmental outcomes. This will be a wide-ranging review that many stakeholders are interested in the outcome of. The current CRIS that this bill implements states that, if there are material changes to the NICNAS cost recovery arrangements as a result of the partnership recommendations, the current CRIS will be amended or a new CRIS will be developed.

A number of industry stakeholders expect that the better regulation ministerial partnership will recommend changes to the cost recovery arrangements of NICNAS as part of broader NICNAS regulatory reforms. The coalition questions the benefit of implementing the cost recovery impact statement through this legislation only months before the better regulation ministerial partnership review is released and responded to, considering the likelihood of further changes to the CRIS. As stated originally, the coalition will not be opposing this bill. We do, however, question the benefit of implementing the cost recovery impact statement before the better regulation ministerial partnership is concluded. We eagerly await the response from the better regulation ministerial partnership review later this year and the recommendations on the broader review of the current structure of the NICNAS scheme.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Industrial Chemicals (Notification and Assessment) Amendment Bill 2012 and thank the member for Boothby for his contribution. This bill amends the Industrial Chemicals (Notification and Assessment) Act 1989 to deliver greater equality across fees and charges for importers and manufacturers of industrial chemicals. This bill enables more than 2,500 low-value introducers to pay lower fees, bringing relief to small business. Only businesses who import or export certain hazardous chemicals will be charged the small processing fee, rather than it being spread across all registered businesses. The bill also enables the removal of a fee that is no longer operational.

These amendments implement a number of outcomes from the recent review of NICNAS cost recovery arrangements that have been informed by consultation with industry, government, community and stakeholders. In Australia there are a number of chemicals on the market that have not been assessed. Outcomes from the review will enable these chemicals to be assessed more quickly. These amendments align with the government's commitment to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses by ensuring that fees reflect the cost of the service provided and also that we are committed to the removal of redundant fees. So it is some cleaning-up legislation.

Finally, the bill also makes some minor technical amendments in light of new work health and safety laws. For consistency, these changes will be reflected in the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Act 1994, which cross-references the ICNA Act. The bill will also improve regulatory consistency while maintaining human health and most importantly—can I say as a Queenslander—protecting environmental safety. We know, Madam Deputy Speaker D'Ath—you being as a proud Queenslander—that it is this side of the House that is committed to protecting the environment. It is sad to say that, as soon as the Liberal and National Party government came to power in Queensland, one of the first things they did was take steps to take away those environmental protections that the Labor government had taken so long to bring about. The Gillard Labor government is committed to preserving the Coral Sea by establishing the world's largest marine reserves. The first thing the Liberal and National Party government did was that the Deputy Premier said he was going to decrease the size of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Contrast those two approaches.

I will touch on the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea, because obviously the impact of chemicals on these reefs is important. That is why it is crucial that we have the appropriate regulators and the appropriate legislation looking after these chemicals. These reserves—the Coral Sea reserves proposed by the Gillard Labor government—take the overall size of the Commonwealth marine reserves network to 3.1 million square kilometres, by far the largest representative network of marine protected areas in the world. So we have a special responsibility as a government to make sure that the chemicals that go into this marine environment are looked after by the appropriate regulations.

The Coral Sea is globally recognised as an extremely important marine region due to its unique biodiversity and also because of its importance in World War II history. Recent international studies have highlighted that the Coral Sea is one of the last remaining areas of the world's oceans where large-scale and biologically rich ecosystems remain relatively in tact. This is something that the people of Moreton care about and that all sensible members of parliament care about. For anyone to question the value of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park would almost be un-Australian, I would suggest. Both these areas are something that I am passionate about even though Moreton is a long way away from both, and I have been on the record numerous times in this chamber and in the other chamber advocating for environmental protection.

Sadly, the Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman, true to form, is neglecting this important part of our culture and our environment, with 450 staff sacked from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Who knows what these 450 staff do in terms of front-line protection of these great marine environments and keeping the chemicals away from them? This is in addition to the 220 jobs cut from the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection. I could go on but, sadly, while Premier Campbell Newman continues to slash and burn, it is Labor that is protecting small business and is committed to environmental safety. I commend this legislation to the House.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Boothby and the member for Moreton for their contribution to the debate on the Industrial Chemicals (Notification and Assessment) Amendment Bill 2012. As has been discussed, the bill delivers on important outcomes of the recent review of cost recovery arrangements for the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme, also known as NICNAS.

The bill fulfils this government's commitment to minimise regulatory burden on business by ensuring that fees and charges reflect the cost of the service actually provided. The bill does this by better aligning NICNAS levy arrangements with the value of chemicals introduced by importers and manufacturers of industrial chemicals. The proposed amendments to current registration charges will deliver a more equitable charging arrangement for business. This means that from 2013-14 more than 2,500 low-value introducers will pay less. Further, there will be a large number of businesses—approximately 1,690—from tiers 2 and 3 whose fees and charges will either be less or stay the same as what they paid in 2012-13. A relatively small number of higher value introducers—under 400—will pay more.

The member for Boothby rightly raised some issues in relation to industry concerns about why we are doing this before the better regulation partnership between the Department of Health and Ageing and the Department of Finance and Deregulation is concluded. This CRIS has been a very long time in coming—several years, in fact, of extensive consultations across industry and across the non-government sector. It supports some very important work that we want NICNAS to get on with. It also supports a fairer fee structure for business.

The amendments in this bill to registration charges support a very important program of work that is beginning to assess the large number of chemicals on the Australian inventory whose impact on human health and the environment is unknown. In 1990, approximately 38,000 chemicals were nominated by industry to be grandfathered as existing chemicals. These 38,000 chemicals have never been assessed for their impacts on human health and the environment. We do not know the quantities of these chemicals, how they are being used, whether they are still even on the market in Australia—many of them will not be—and the extent to which the community and the environment are being exposed. Understandably, the unknown risks associated with these chemicals have been of great concern to the community and to us. That is why Labor committed to ensuring that the risks posed by these chemicals to the community, workers and the environment be reduced. It is very much part of our policy platform.

Our commitment to this is demonstrated with the launch recently of the framework that will see the faster assessment of these chemicals. I am pleased to announce that stage 1 of this program has already commenced. In this stage, NICNAS will be looking at chemicals identified by stakeholders as needing priority assessment. This includes chemicals for which NICNAS does hold exposure data, chemicals that overseas bodies have taken action against, and chemicals found in babies' cord blood This has been a very longstanding issue, sitting on the policy agenda, and I am very pleased that we are in fact taking action on it. Over the next four years, 3,000 chemicals will be assessed. As you can see, this body of work is about the long-term safety and protection of the Australian community and our environment. Other measures that are included in this bill ensure that fees are equitably applied only to businesses seeking particular NICNAS services and that provisions relating to fees for redundant services are removed. The measures described in the bill have been subject to extensive consultation, and stakeholder views have been taken into account in finalising NICNAS's cost recovery arrangements. In addition to delivering on important outcomes of the recent review of the NICNAS cost recovery arrangements, the bill also ensures consistency with the new model health, work and safety laws, which commenced in the Commonwealth in some Australian states and territories on 1 January this year. Changes will also be made to the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Code Act 1994, which cross-references the NICNAS Act. These amendments reflect the government's commitment to ensuring that the most efficient and equitable regulatory system is in place for industrial chemicals while maintaining human health and environmental safety.

In closing, I particularly want to acknowledge the input of stakeholders in developing measures included in the bill. I believe that the collaboration between, government, industry and the community has delivered well-considered and appropriate mending legislation and I thank the opposition for their support.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.