Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In continuation: this bill adds no new triggers; it is just a cumbersome and expensive re-check of the triggers already funded by industry. This legislation simply adds another layer of red tape through an automatic seven- to 15-year review for all chemicals, with the extra cost ultimately passed on to the farm or other chemical users. As I have already said in my remarks, our farmers in particular are price takers; they cannot pass these costs on.

The seven- to 15-year time frame for registration of chemicals will tie up staff and resources in the APVMA—and I will conclude my remarks in a minute by referring to some of the problems that can happen when we are distracted, tie up resources and turn a blind eye to some of the chemical contamination occurring in our food imports. This time frame will reduce the APVMA's resources available to deal with critical registrations and permits. It will cause an economic burden on registrants and parent companies of active constituents, given that there are 1,900 active constituents—of which 780 are unique—from the 9,900 currently registered agvet chemicals.

Currently there are only 17 APVMA evaluators to work on these 9,900 products that may be up for the re-registration process. Quite obviously, the APVMA will be significantly under-resourced—under this current government in particular—and retraining evaluators or putting more evaluators into the system will be very difficult to do quickly. Why would we want to put so many more evaluators into the system quickly? Because this bill claims that the commencement date of the new regime will be 1 July 2013—in just four months' time. This would mean that there would be no time for adjustment to the changes and no time for upskilling the additional evaluators—which would have to be put into place. This puts the APVMA under enormous strain and calls into question the efficacy of the new regime. This is not about reducing red tape for the industry or about improving outcomes. Since 2008, the Rudd and Gillard governments have introduced over 20,000 additional regulations while repealing fewer than 100 regulations. Quite clearly, this is just more red tape gone mad.

I have to say that the coalition will aim to amend this bill. I certainly do not support the bill in its current form. We will aim to delay the commencement by 12 months to allow for a proper consultation process and to give time to develop new protocols and processes for the APVMA, which will minimise the distraction to and cost to2 industry and, in fact, produce a better regime and a better outcome at the end of the day. Registrants have agreed to work with the APVMA to 'road-test' the risk framework to ensure that it operates as intended. In other words, we will have a better outcome if the government agrees to our amendments. This will be in line with the coalition's commitment to cut unnecessary red tape by at least one billion dollars. The government has failed to do any cost-benefit analysis of mandatory re-registration processes for low-risk agvet chemicals which are used by a wide range of groups; for example, glyphosate and iodine.

A major concern was expressed by the key stakeholders in their evidence to the senate inquiry into this bill: in particular, they identified the economic cost to re-register in a small market like Australia. This could lead to a net loss of chemical products, directly impacting on farm productivity. Industry supports the streamlining of the existing process for identifying and reviewing suspect chemicals but opposes a re-registration process which simply adds another layer of regulation and does not speed up the removal of unsafe chemicals. We have already seen innovative products being delayed in their introduction to Australia—for example, a sheep drench developed by Australians for Australian conditions; while the product has been on the market and in use in New Zealand for two years, it still awaits approval for use in Australia.

The Victorian Farmers Federation 'supports reforms that deliver more effective and efficient agricultural and veterinary chemical regulations'. The VFF goes on to say:

However the Federal Government’s draft Agricultural and Veterinary Chemical Regulation Bill falls well short of the mark on achieving these goals.

The draft bill will increase regulatory costs and potentially reduce the availability of chemicals crucial to Australia’s food producers. The major flaw in the bill is its imposition of a mandatory re-registration process for all chemicals, every seven to 15 years (Schedule 2). The merits cited for this change are it will align Australia with similar US and EU standards, but this argument fails to recognise the high cost of re-registration on a much smaller Australian market.

The National Farmers' Federation, similarly, argues:

The NFF has confidence in the current system used by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) for the assessment and regulation of chemicals for agricultural and veterinary uses.

At the Senate committee hearing, the NFF said:

In the absence of the government undertaking a clear analysis of the cost and benefits of the proposed measures within the better regulation process, the NFF continues to hold concerns that the proposed changes will impact on the cost of chemicals and the availability of chemicals in the Australian market.

Surely this government hears what its major farmer advocates have to say, so you have to wonder whether it is turning a blind eye, has its hands over its ears or does not care—or perhaps it is just incompetent.

I want to draw the House's attention to some of the real problems with chemical detection and assessment that are occurring in Australia every day. I want to quote from the Age on 30 May 2012:

AUSTRALIAN medical experts have raised the alarm over a rising number of Asian fish imports containing banned antibiotics.

Five consignments of fish from Vietnam - including base fillets, catfish, tilapia and frozen fish cutlets - have been stopped by biosecurity officials this year because they contained enrofloxacin, an antibiotic banned in Australia. Last year three loads of Vietnamese fish failed tests for banned antibiotics.

An analysis by the Age of failed food results since 2010 showed:

…1,050 imported foods, or an average of one consignment a day, have not met Australian standards. Almost 400 foods were stopped at entry because of micro-organisms such as E. coli, 246 failed because they contained banned additives or substances, 228 contained contaminants and 138 failed chemical analysis.

Chinese food failed the most tests, 13 per cent, followed by food from India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and France. The failed food results included 66 instances of Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause pregnant women to miscarry, and eight consignments with Vibrio cholerae bacteria, strains of which can cause cholera.

I quote again from the article in the Age:

Professor Collignon has criticised the federal department for its low levels of testing for dangerous chemicals. The department's figures show that in the last six months of 2011, it conducted just 209 tests for fluoroquinolones (types of antibiotic) and two for chloramphenicol, which in rare cases can trigger fatal disease.

Professor Collignon said the department was not testing enough and the failure rate of the antibiotics tests—about 4 per cent—was too high.

'I think that sort of failure rate is atrocious,' he said. 'They are hardly doing any tests. How many tonnes of seafood do we import, for god's sake? When you look at the tonnes of stuff we import and the 4 per cent failure rate, there's a problem.'

He added that 24 tests in six months for E. coli in Chinese food was not enough.

I mention all this because it is about the chemical testing regime in Australia for imported foods. It is a burden on another area of departmental work, which is testing chemicals in Australia. Surely we must have a more balanced response to the whole issue of potential food contamination, or chemicals in the food chain. We have an extraordinary situation in Australia now whereby we test less and less for chemicals and other disease-causing substances—indeed, fatal-disease-causing substances in imports—while we stand here in this parliament debating whether to substantially add to the cost, regulation and red tape burden to the Australian ag and vet industry when they need best practice. We need to be doing a lot more to ensure that the high standards of safety of our domestic food can be matched by the safety of our imported products.

New importers of high-risk foods face testing for all consignments until they pass five tests. They are then tested at a rate of 25 per cent until they pass 20 consecutive tests. The rate then falls to just five per cent, matching all other imported foods. So clearly we have to do a lot more work in this area. The article in the Age also reported:

A spokesman for Victoria's Department of Health, Bram Alexander, said the federal department had not advised it of any negative assessments this year—

and here he is talking about 2012—

He said a handful of assessments were passed on last year, but the state took no action on the matters. It had been found that either the importer was still holding the failed food or that cooking would make it safe.

I suggest that this government has quite clearly lost the plot. It is distracted from the real issues in relation to chemical contamination in this country. We have to do more. We have to do better when it comes to safety from chemical contamination in Australia. This bill will not address the real problems in front of us. It will simply be another means of distraction—a smokescreen—while a whole range of other problems arise in containers on our shores each day. We certainly will not be supporting the bill in its current form.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012. I do so following on from my colleague and good friend the member for Murray, and I note with interest that the member for Groom, the shadow minister for energy and resources, is at the table. They and yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, are people who are passionate about the interests of regional Australia, passionate about the interests of farmers in this country. This particular bill does nothing to help the farmers of our land or the producers of our food, and certainly nothing to help regional Australia.

This bill seeks to implement changes to the approval, registration and reconsideration of the agricultural and veterinary, or agvet, chemicals to improve—supposedly—the efficiency and effectiveness of the current regulatory arrangements and provide greater certainty to the community—so Labor would think—that chemicals approved for use in Australia are safe. The reforms in the bill are aimed at enhancing the consistency, efficiency and transparency of agvet chemical approvals, registrations and reconsiderations through the development, publication and implementation of a risk framework, which the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority—the APVMA—must have regard to and legislative amendments to align regulatory effort with chemical risk.

The bill is also intended to improve the ability of the APVMA to enforce compliance with its regulatory decisions by providing the APVMA with a graduated range of compliance enforcement powers and introducing a power to apply statutory conditions to registrations and approvals. It also seeks to ensure the ongoing safety of agvet chemicals and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of current agvet chemical reconsideration arrangements by putting in place a mandatory re-approval and reregistration regime designed to identify any potentially problematic chemicals whilst minimising any negative impacts on affected businesses. The reforms are aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of assessment processes for agvet chemical applications for approval, registration and variation and improving the timeliness of agvet chemical approvals, registrations and reconsiderations. Additionally, the government hopes to improve consistency in data protection provisions and remove disincentives for industry to provide data in support of ongoing registration of agricultural and veterinary chemicals.

This is all long-winded stuff. Is it necessary? We think not. In both the Senate and the House inquiries into this bill the coalition presented dissenting reports due to the additional layers of red tape—and I could almost add 'onerous green tape'—that will be imposed on the industry, which will bring with it additional costs and further complicate the workings of business and industry. And if there is one thing we do not need in this nation it is further complication of the workings of business and industry. The dissenting report from coalition members on the House committee recommended that the reregistration process be removed from the bill and that there be a troika task force of industry, the department and the APVMA to urgently evaluate and improve the internal systems within the APVMA to increase the regulator's efficiency and effectiveness as well as the speed of review of at-risk chemistries.

The Nationals and Liberals support reforms that reduce cumbersome assessment and registration processes, reforms that are more cost-efficient for farmers and reforms that provide industry with timely access to the best and safest crop and animal protectants. Surely that would be enough. The bill makes a number of incremental changes to arrangements to manage agvet chemical registration and improvements to compliance and enforcement arrangements, most of which try to improve the efficiency and are supported by the industry. Those on this side of the House support a streamlining of the existing process for focusing on suspect chemistries rather than the addition of new—and high—hoops for the industry to jump through.

The most significant change, however, is the reregistration process, a process which contradicts the objectives set out in the bill and which will instead entrench yet another layer of red tape—an automatic seven- to 15-year review process for all chemicals—with the extra costs ultimately being passed on to the chemical users. Who are these users? They are of course the farmers, the crop growers, the food producers of this land. We have the world's best farmers—I am sure the member for Groom would agree with me—and they are being subjected all the time to red tape and green tape. They are being subjected to onerous, burdensome bureaucracy levelled at them by this government.

Whilst the government claims the reregistration process will increase the scrutiny of suspect chemistries, the reality is that the increase in administrative workload for APVMA staff will reduce the resources available to deal with critical registrations and permits. Farmer groups have noted that the current proposal appears to betray the fact that APVMA does not have appropriate internal systems in place to maintain an orderly, risk-based system for chemical reviews. We heard the member for Murray comment on the fact that the National Farmers' Federation is quite satisfied with the system in place at present—quite happy with the status quo. Why is the government meddling with this? Why is Labor sticking its nose in where it is not wanted?

Rather than addressing systemic problems affecting existing review arrangements and listening to farmers, the government has again ignored their calls and is seeking to impose the burden of APVMA's deficiencies on registrants by having every chemical submitted to an automatic reregistration process. If things are going wrong—I note the Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has just joined us—why not consult industry? Why not consult farmers? Why not consult the people on the ground and talk to them about the problems they see? They might have a better idea about how to do it. Rather than that, all the Labor Party want to do is put in more layers of red tape and green tape and more bureaucracy—imposing more costs on the people who are growing the food to feed our nation and others.

The seven- to 15-year timeframe for reregistration of the 1,900 active constituents, out of the 9,900 currently registered agvet chemicals, is unrealistic. This process will tie up staff and resources in APVMA and put an economic burden on registrants of active constituents and their parent companies. These costs will be passed on to the end users, who include land managers and producers.

The government has failed to do any cost-benefit analysis of mandatory reregistration processors for low-risk agvet chemicals with multiple uses, such as glyphosate, iodine and sodium chlorite. It is obvious that, as a result of this expensive and time-consuming reregistration process, registrants will, in a small market such as Australia, deem it uneconomic to reregister chemicals which are safe and effective. This will lead to a net loss of chemical products, having a direct impact on farm productivity. We do not want that.

The real problems which need addressing are the inefficiencies in the current system. So go to farmers and go to industry. Take on board what the NFF says. But do not come out with these sorts of policies, policies which just meddle unnecessarily in a system which is working fairly efficiently. If there are things which need to be fixed up, by all means go to the farmers, the people on the ground, and talk to them about what needs fixing. Do not just bring in legislation which will do nothing but impose more compliance costs on farmers.

The introduction to Australia of innovative products, such as a sheep drench specifically developed by Australians for Australian conditions, is already being delayed. This drench has been on the market and in use in New Zealand for two years but is yet to get the green light in Australia. It was developed here and is suitable for Australian conditions, yet Australian farmers cannot use it—because of inefficiencies in place which this new legislation will do nothing to improve. The Deloitte Access Economics report commissioned by CropLife Australia highlighted this concern. It stated that there will be an increase in costs of $8 million a year to product registrants—costs which will have to be passed on to users. We heard the member for Murray say that farmers are not price makers; they are price takers. They have to take what they get. That is what world markets dictate and that is what domestic markets dictate. They have to take the price available. With the Australian dollar high at the moment and with everything going against the poor old farmers, they are being forced to cut costs every which way. This is another hit they do not need.

Farmer groups have re-emphasised their support for the existing chemical review program as the most appropriate risk based mechanism for prioritising the assessment of the safety, efficiency and impact upon trade of agvet products. Any reforms to the industry need to address the shortcomings of the existing chemical review process. Industry supports the streamlining of the existing process for identifying and reviewing suspect chemicals but opposes the reregistration process, which simply adds another layer of regulations. The coalition strongly believes the only way to achieve the stated aim of this bill—to achieve efficiency and speed up the review of high-risk chemistries—is to amend the bill to remove the reregistration process.

The start date of this bill is 1 July 2013. There are only 17 evaluators and there are some 9,000 products which may be up for the registration process. APVMA has a chief executive officer who has only just come on board and Labor has given us nothing about how the APVMA it will manage the changes and the increased workload. All of that again shows how wrong it is to ram legislation through this parliament—legislation which is, in any event, unnecessary. APVMA needs time to establish its process and time to consult with industry on how it will manage the new legislative requirements. Given that it currently takes up to 15 years to review some chemicals, it is important we give APVMA time to adjust—or the whole organisation will just go into meltdown.

The coalition would like to see the commencement date delayed by a year in order to allow time to develop a risk-management framework clearly detailing the application requirements that are essential to support other efficiency measures such as 'shut the gate' and elapsed timeframe reforms. This extra time would allow registrants to work with the APVMA to road test the risk framework to ensure it is operated as intended. This has not occurred to date and the current manual of requirements and guidelines is insufficient, with significant gaps, which need to be addressed.

Furthermore, without a comprehensive risk framework to deliver high quality applications to the APVMA, it may struggle with the applications that do not have all the required information, resulting in more applications being denied, longer timeframes for decisions and a higher refusal rate—just as in the example of the Australian sheep drench, for instance. The consequence of a poorly handled transition will amplify the problems identified by farmers and by industry that will see fewer safe products remaining on the market, diminishing the competitiveness of the Australian industry. If there is anything that we do not need in Australia today it is a reduction in the competitiveness of Australian industry and farmers, who are having a tough enough time as it is. This in turn will increase costs for farmers as the price of pesticides increase.

I talk about farmers and like to use the words 'farmer', 'farm' and 'farming' in this parliament. They are great words; they are essential words. But it seems that they are lost on the Prime Minister. I had the Parliamentary Library look this up. Our Prime Minister has mentioned the word 'farmer' six times. She has mentioned it in condolence motions, one for the Hon. Douglas Scott and one for the Hon. Ralph Hunt. She has mentioned farmers in two ministerial statements about Afghanistan, talking about how the farmers there are being helped by Australians to improve the things that they are doing so they can produce more food and help that country transition. The Prime Minister also talked about farmers in a speech on the Queensland flood tax of 2011. The only other time that she has talked about farmers was in a speech on, believe it or not, Patrick Farmer, the marathon runner and former Liberal member.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's nothing wrong with Pat Farmer.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Certainly there is nothing wrong with that, Minister. But what is wrong is that our Prime Minister does not seem to recognise our farmers, Australian farmers. You can laugh about it; you can joke about it. But Parliamentary Secretary Sidebottom, who is beside you, knows exactly how important our farmers are. And I am sure that you do, too, Minister. But they are not being recognised in this place and they are certainly not being recognised or acknowledged by the Prime Minister. That is a disgrace, because our farmers deserve recognition. They do not ask for a hand out; they just ask for a hand up. They ask for a fair go. They are not getting one from a Prime Minister who thinks that going to regional Australia is going to the Western Suburbs of Sydney.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Come on!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, that is absolutely fair dinkum. People out in regional Australia are hurting. They do not need legislation such as this coming in preventing farmers from doing the job that they do so diligently and so dutifully on behalf of the Australian people. They do not need a Prime Minister who refuses to acknowledge the great work that they do. It is high time that the Prime Minister just occasionally gave them a bit of credit where credit is due.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me associate myself with those parting remarks from the member for Riverina. I was involved with the review of the Agricultural And Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012 after being seconded to the relevant committee. Small business is the economic driver of this country. It is the biggest employer. If there is one consistent complaint when I talk to people in small business it is about ballooning regulation and red tape. I have lost count of the number of builders, electricians, workshop mechanics and shop proprietors in small communities who have told me that they have reduced the size of their business, sometimes to a one-person operation. Why? Because they were sick to death of the paperwork and added expense affecting their viability, eroding their profits and making their products more expensive as they either compete for space against imports or—as farmers do—sell into a world market that cares not for the cost of their production.

There is one thing that we should do above all others in this parliament: to adhere to the adage that we should endeavour to do no harm. If we are to inflict damage on a certain sector, there must be a clear-cut case that the good far outweighs the harm. In the case of the Agricultural And Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012, that cannot be said. In fact, I am of the opinion that, as the bill currently stands, it has the ability to do more damage than good.

I presume I was drafted onto the committee because I have a quite recent past involvement as a user of chemicals in agriculture and as a farmer and as a representative on a number of agricultural research and extension organisations. There were 15 submissions to the inquiry and six organisations or individuals plus the department gave evidence on our single day of hearings here in Canberra on 4 February. Only one of those people who fronted the committee alleged any failure in the current procedures. Even then they did not present any evidence to support this point of view. The inquiry heard no evidence that Australia's current registration system is allowing dangerous chemicals to be sold in Australia under licence. In fact, we were told by the National Audit Office that the APVMA has reasonable arrangements in place to identify chemicals that require review and to prioritise the reviews according to the risk that they represent.

So the question is: why is the government preparing to bring in a mandatory re-registration process when the case has not clearly been spelt out that one is needed? What we heard was that the industry was annoyed with the ability of the APVMA to frustrate the ability for new applications to be decided upon in a timely fashion. The central aim of this bill is the introduction of mandatory re-registration of chemicals that currently hold registration—and some of these products have been used for decades without dispute. It was proposed that they be subject to a re-registration process every five to 15 years, depending on how someone within the APVMA assesses the amount of danger that particular product may pose to the environment or people.

Currently, there are around 10,000 formulations registered for use in Australia. Such changes would mean that the APVMA would be trying to process in excess of 2,000 applications a year. It hardly seems likely that this extra workload will speed up the process. Already we know there is a significant backlog because one of the key objectives in the bill states that is the case: there is an existing backlog.

The most concerning thing is the possibility of extra costs this will inflict upon the industry. In fact, the Deloitte Access Economics study found it would be, in direct costs, $8 million a year. It is very concerning that the APVMA and the department have done no cost-benefit analysis. And it is impossible to say, from the information, just how much it will cost farmers, because ultimately they are the people who will pay the price.

As I said, the estimate was $8 million in direct costs, but that does not include the collecting and collating of new information. So if a company was to face a mandatory renewal of registration—and it may be required to find new scientific information to back up the application—it would entail a cost directly to the industry, an extra cost which in the end must be passed on to the farmer.

The best reason the department could give—at least, by my judgement—for this mandatory registration was that other countries were doing it this way. There are many things around the world that I would not want to copy. In fact, Europe is held up as a shining example in many cases. There are so many things in Europe—considering their financial complications at the moment—that I think Australia definitely should not copy. In fact, some of the regulations they have around the reregistration of chemicals, which impose new costs or complications for farmers, may well be one of those.

It can be misleading. Australia is a major exporter of food, and is recognised as such around the world. About 71 per cent of our production is exported. In specific industries like wheat or beef we are one of the biggest players, but our agricultural sector by world standards is not that big—it is just that we export most of our production. Many of our industries are far smaller than those I have mentioned already, and they are little more than niche areas of production which market into a certain area. That means that the size of our agriculture sector is not significant in world terms. So a market for a certain chemical in our agriculture sector is not necessarily a viable opportunity for any company wishing to sell it.

A number of witnesses, including CropLife, GRDC and farmer groups raised the fact that chemicals with low sales may not be worth the sponsoring company spending the money on re-registration. In fact, they cannot recoup the investment required.

Dr Rohan Rainbow of the GRDC told the committee the European scheme this bill is seeking to emulate has led to the number of registered formulations falling from 945 to 336 in 10 years, and this equates to a 64 per cent loss in variety of products available across the sector over that time. That is not because they were necessarily seen as dangerous; it was just, in the greater part, because the registrations were not renewed. We have no information to tell us exactly why this is, but it is highly likely it was the costs related to the renewal process—that those companies could not find a way to recover the amount of money they had to spend on the registration process for it to be worthwhile their going through with it.

The Australian market is just a fraction of the size of the European market so we do not know what the fallout would be. We should. As members of parliament, if we are to make an informed decision on this we should know exactly what those costs are for our agriculture sector. We should have that cost-benefit analysis but we are being asked, in this case, to vote in the dark, as it were.

In recent times the APVMA has been reviewing a number of chemicals. As an example I will focus on one that created quite a few headlines some 12 months ago. That chemical was diuron. Diuron has been used for more than 40 years—or probably closer to 50 years—around the nation. The initial recommendations from the APVMA were very concerning, largely because they were concerned about run-off into the marine environment. Farmers in my area were very alarmed.

My connections farm in an area of very low rainfall—I wish it were other!—with little run-off. We are hundreds of kilometres from the coast. In fact, should there be run-off it would drain inland into a salt lake environment. So it is very unlikely to do any harm to the environment. We use exceptionally low rates. Yet the initial recommendations were such that my farmers were very concerned they may be losing the use of a very valuable chemical. There were adjustments to the registration, and in the end the recommendations largely concentrated on the higher-rainfall areas and areas closer to the coast. But the issue created a lot of work for a lot of people in the industry to get back to basic common sense.

I am very concerned there is an opportunity for flare-ups of other non-commonsense proposals. So, like many, I have been calling for reform within the APVMA. Its lack of responsiveness has been a concern to me for some time.

I informed this House back in the 2011 that farmers across southern Australia—and within my electorate—were struggling with a mouse plague. Tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, were lost to the industry as a result of this mouse plague. You need a bit of history here. There was a time when we used, in this country, strychnine bates to kill mice. Grain was treated with strychnine. One grain was lethal, and it worked very well. In somebody's wisdom, some years ago they removed strychnine for possible use on broad-acre agriculture. There were concerns not about damage to wildlife but about contaminating an export crop. There are many stories around about who was driving those concerns and whether they were put up for marketing purposes in the first place, but the long and short of it is that we lost the use of strychnine—a very good chemical. If it were reintroduced now, the cost has unfortunately blown out so it will make it quite difficult. Its recommended replacement is a chemical called zinc phosphide. Zinc phosphide is an S7 poison, so it needs to be handled with utmost care, but farmers are trained and educated in handling these chemicals.

There we were in the middle of a mouse plague and badly needed an emergency response, but the APVMA was very slow in moving to respond. In fact, that mouse plague was over gone—dead and buried, I might say, to use a phrase from somewhere else. It was long gone before we ever got the response out of the APVMA that we needed. At the time I said that there should be mechanisms within their operating structure to take into account the economic impact of non-action or the economic impact of withdrawing a chemical from the market, as well as taking into account the environment benefits of withholding those chemicals from the market, if you will. We should always have the full story. In fact, there is a very good simile: on a regular basis, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee needs to make decisions about the relative benefit of any proposed medicine for human use. It has to weigh up the dollars against the value the individuals in the electorate will get out of that particular registration. I think that is the kind of flexibility the APVMA should have.

I accept that there are parts of this bill that aim at making the APVMA a more responsive organisation, by setting time limits. Those are the parts of the bill that I broadly support. The amendments that the member for Calare has foreshadowed ask: firstly, that the 12-month mandatory renewable registration process be removed from the bill; and, secondly, that we take another 12 months to get the rest of this right, so we can get the extra things in the legislation that are needed and make sure that we get a responsive APVMA that is, above all, cost-efficient and does not pass extra costs and red tape on to our farming sector. The sector it is does not really make any difference; it is another small business in Australia that does not need extra costs.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Grey's contribution just then and associate myself with those comments. I would like to put on the record my thanks for him spearheading the dissenting report from the House committee on this issue. That report will certainly form the basis for policy changes, we hope, under a new government.

The Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012 is supposed to improve the regulation of ag and vet chemicals. Presumably, the Labor Party's definition of improving regulations means making more of them and making them more restrictive—more red tape and more barriers to production. I note in the bill's summary that this legislation will update offences, create new offences and insert civil penalty provisions. That seems to sum up this government's policy platform: create more red tape and make the current red tape harder to cut through. To serve as a permanent reminder to this government's suffocating principles, this bill will insert a new requirement, a gift that keeps on giving. Under this legislation, existing approvals and registrations will operate for a finite period, which means new applications must be lodged for re-approval or reregistration.

The Liberal-National coalition, as has been said today, is moving amendments to remove this reregistration process and delay commencement for 12 months to allow proper consultation on this matter. These amendments are in line with the Liberal-National coalition's commitment to cutting red tape and making industry more efficient, and certainly making government regulators more efficient. I understand that the Labor Party had only one election commitment relating to agriculture, and this before us is it. But, when it was sold to agriculture before the last election, it was not about introducing more red tape and choking up industry; it was about the opposite: streamlining things. But now the deed is done and the red tape is here. Having next to zero experience in business, industry or indeed agriculture, those opposite have no understanding of what red tape actually means. They have no concept of the impact red tape has on industry and, in turn, the impact on employment and wealth generation.

Additional layers of red tape add cost. The onerous burdens of red tape contained in this bill will increase the cost to industry by about one third and that cost has to be paid by someone. Instead of adding to the nation's production, we have workers and industry tied up with compliance tasks that produce nothing and achieve nothing. Exacerbating the problem is the compliance cost borne by the regulator itself. This bill seeks to drown the regulator in paperwork, diminishing their ability to identify and review suspect chemicals. The red tape in this bill achieves nothing more than appeasing to the coalition partners of this government, the Greens.

This bill has been subject to both Senate and House inquiries. Repeated submissions to both of those inquiries, by industry groups, farmers and veterinarian groups, identified the additional costs, complexities and increasing red tape in the agricultural industry, in particular through the processes that are sought to be put in place in this bill.

The Liberal-Nationals coalition members on the House committee, spearheaded by the member for Grey, gave a dissenting report recommending the removal of that re-registration process and establishing a task force to urgently review the APVMA systems with a view to improving the efficiency, effectiveness and speed of the review of at-risk chemistries—and that is what we will pursue if elected to government. The manner in which reviews are undertaken and decisions are made at the APVMA leave a lot to be desired, and it has clearly been shown to be disastrous when it comes to a real world application.

Two examples of how this complicated, slow process is hurting agriculture can be seen in the regulation of diuron and dimethoate. Those two chemicals apply particularly to two industries which mean a lot to me. They mean a lot to the electorate of Dawson. They mean a lot to jobs in that electorate. They mean a lot to the state of Queensland. They mean a lot to the nation. The chemical diuron is an essential part of weed management in the sugar industry. My electorate is the largest sugar-growing electorate in the country, and diuron is an extremely effective form of weed control that has been responsible for increased efficiency and production in that industry. It has also been the subject of a sloppy scientific review and a lack of consultation through the APVMA processes. At no point did that regulator consider the impact on agriculture and what its decisions would mean in the real world.

The Greens, and the extreme green groups that are behind them, think that a chemical might be suspect. The next thing that happens is that this government simply bans it—or at least regulates it to the point of it effectively being banned. No-one consulted with the sugar industry in North Queensland when the APVMA made their recent effective ban on diuron. No-one thought about what would happen to the industry if that chemical was effectively banned. No-one bothered to consider if there were viable alternatives to that effectively banned chemical and no-one thought about what North Queensland sugar farmers would actually have to do if it was effectively banned. And no-one can definitively show that there will be any benefit from this effective ban whatsoever.

The sugar farmers in North Queensland are acutely aware of the quality of their environment, the land and their waterways. Their entire businesses, their livelihoods, are based on the quality of the environment, the quality of the land and the quality of the waterways in which they operate their cane farms. In recent generations we have seen an increase in focus on sustainable practice, and cane farmers in North Queensland have adopted a wide range of environmental practices that provide good outcomes for them, their industry and the environment. These are new environmental practices, such as green trash blanketing. That, in conjunction with the effective use of diuron, has proved to be effective.

If diuron is removed from the process, which is what has happened with the APVMA's recent ruling, then the environmental practices that are going on are no longer effective for the sugar growers. This may be the result that the Greens hope to see. Do they want to see a return to out-dated practices which may have harmed the environment more than what is going on now? Did the regulator, the Greens and the green groups that were pushing the regulator to go in this direction—or even those opposite—consider for one minute what alternative practices that there may be? Did anyone bother to ask anyone in the sugar industry what would happen if this chemical was no longer available to use? There is no economically viable alternative.

The regulator placed restrictions on diuron, on the use of diuron and on the concentrations of diuron that render it ineffective, and it basically banned its use during the precise time when it is used in the sugar industry. No consideration was given to the development of an economically viable alternative before banning the industry standard, and the question has to be asked: where was good science in all of this? Cane growers released some criticisms of this process of the APVMA. In it, they said that there was new information that was given on diuron metabolites that was not present in the 2005 review that the APVMA undertook.

The cane growers said there was no evaluation of a practice change undertaken by the sugarcane industry since that 2005 review, and they noted that the sugarcane industry already used the reduced rates of diuron in its farming systems. They said that there was no evaluation of the Queensland government's reef regulations, which targeted residual PSII herbicides, particularly diuron, where the rate of application was reduced to 1.8 kilograms of active constituent per hectare per year. Finally, they said there was no evaluation of the effectiveness of the $200 million reef rescue program that sits under the reef plan. They went on to say that both have targets to improve water quality and reduce herbicides by 25 per cent and 50 per cent respectively, and that herbicides of interest under the programs actually included diuron.

While all of this was going on, I went and spoke to a fellow by the name of Professor Ivan Kennedy. Professor Kennedy has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. He has a PhD in Science and a doctorate of Science in Agriculture. He is a fellow member of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and, to boot, he is a professor in agricultural and environmental chemistry at the University of Sydney. He is a guy who is pretty well qualified and a guy who knows what he is talking about when it comes to agrichemicals. I asked him about all of the kerfuffle we were seeing in the media at the time. He said that a safe level of diuron not affecting plant growth noticeably would be 0.1 to one parts per billion. That is one microgram per litre.

Professor Kennedy said that aquatic plants, such as lemna and seagrass, require sustained levels of 50 to 100 parts per billion in the water to kill them. They would recover from a brief two-day exposure. He said the scientific data is reassuring in that such safe levels—that is, one part per billion—are never exceeded in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. In general, the concentrations are too low to measure, except using special samplers that concentrate the diuron about 1,000 times. He went on to say that there is no evidence that coral in the lagoon is being harmed by such low concentrations below the limits of chemical detection, certainly not 60 kilometres from the shore. Yet we have had the APVMA, driven by the extreme green groups, effectively ban diuron in one of their recent decisions. Where was science in all of this? Goodness knows.

I also represent the Bowen Gumlu region. It is the largest tomato-growing region in this country. There, in my electorate, they produce about 90 per cent of our winter tomato crop and about 60 per cent of the year-round tomato crop. There are 47,000 tonnes of capsicums and chillies that also come from there, which are worth about $100 million to this nation every year. That small region in Queensland also produces 95 per cent of our capsicums in September and October. As I said, $104 million worth of tomatoes a year, or 90 per cent, are grown in that winter period. They use dimethoate for controlling fruit fly—or at least they used to use it. The APVMA conducted a review on the use of dimethoate and found it could pose a dietary risk to consumers. So in 2011 they lowered the maximum residue rate for dimethoate from .02 milligrams a day to .001 milligrams a day.

Not content with strangling agricultural production for the domestic market, basically that decision restricted export market opportunities as well. New Zealand has its own rules and they accept dimethoate at rates which now in Australia we do not. The fact is that there is a large export market for those tomatoes and capsicums over in New Zealand. They accept the standards that were previously used. They would have accepted the product but now the APVMA has come in and made this ruling. It does not matter where the tomatoes are going. They could be going to the domestic market or they could be exported to New Zealand where the dimethoate rate is accepted. But they cannot export them anymore because this ruling has been an effective ban on exports of those tomatoes to New Zealand because there is no other method currently accepted by the APVMA that will be accepted in New Zealand to ensure they do not have fruit fly and other pests in them. That is an export opportunity lost. It has been lost for a year. It will probably be lost this year. Two years is a long time to be out of that market because the market share shrinks on a daily basis and the growers up there fear the window will close while they sit on the sidelines waiting for bureaucrats and regulators to sort out the system.

The entire system is flawed from the ground up. At a time when flexibility and speed determine market share, our agricultural sector is drowning in bureaucracy. There has been much political posturing in this country. They talk about Australia's great opportunity as a food bowl for the world but under the management of this government such notions are pure fantasy. While our farmers are out there growing food for our people and for the people of other countries, we have Labor and the Greens tying public servants up in knots of red and green tape preventing those farmers doing what they do best.

Consider the re-registration process in this bill. There are 9,900 agricultural and veterinary chemicals currently registered with 1,900 active constituents making up 9,900 chemicals. This bill, an act of agricultural sabotage, is requiring each one of them to be registered again. They are already registered. Imagine the staff and resources that are going to be tied up in the process. Instead of applying close and urgent scrutiny to high-risk agricultural or veterinary chemicals, this bill will have those people wasting time going through re-registering thousands of low-risk chemicals.

This bill is being driven by the Greens, by extreme green groups. It has the government jumping up and down all the time. If it is going to be passed in this place it will be another milestone for the Greens to celebrate from this government.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a privilege to follow my colleague the member for Dawson, who never ceases to amaze me with his broad depth of knowledge and understanding of the issues that surround his electorate. For a man with a journalistic background to have that sort of grasp of agricultural issues is a real testament to his commitment and research on the job.

I do not support the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012 in its current form. This bill would lead to a net loss in efficiency of the regulator and, contrary to the stated aims, will reduce its ability to identify and review suspect chemistries. The coalition will move amendments to remove the re-registration process to ensure a net gain in efficiency, and delay the commencement for 12 months to allow a proper consultation process and time to develop new protocols and processes for the APVMA, which will minimise the disruption and cost to industry.

Reforms were supposed to reduce cumbersome assessment and re-registration processes, be more cost-effective for farmers and provide industry with timely access to the best and safest crop and animal protectants. We do support these objectives. However, instead the changes to the reregistration process contradict these objectives and instead will entrench yet another layer of red tape through an automatic seven- to 15-year review process for all chemicals with the extra costs ultimately being passed on to chemical users, the farmers. Essentially, the re-registration system adds no triggers but just another expensive recheck of the triggers funded by industry. There needs to be stringent and proper process for all farm chemicals, but the introduction of re-registration is unnecessary and burdensome.

Being a farmer, I probably have a greater understanding of the impacts of this bill than anyone. In my previous life, before coming here, I was constantly involved in the evolution and introduction of chemical processes and farm chemicals to increase productivity. One of these chemicals that will be up for re-registration, which has been on the market for over 30 years, is glyphosate.

In the late seventies and early eighties, my brothers and I, along with the New South Wales Department of Agriculture and the company Monsanto, conducted trials on our farm looking at the use of Roundup, or glyphosate, to control weeds as a replacement for cultivation. While some are using this bill as some sort of a standard to highlight farm chemicals as a bogeyman, that work that was done earlier on and the subsequent work done by many in the use of glyphosate as a farm tool has truly revolutionised the production of agriculture in Australia today. Indeed, there are now areas, particularly in my electorate, that are the centre of grain production in Australia whereas 30 or 40 years ago they would have been considered marginal grazing areas at best. These chemicals have not destroyed the environment. They have not destroyed the soil but have had indeed the opposite effect. In an area that has used chemical farming through glyphosate and other chemicals to control the weeds, one of the first things that you notice is that the microbiology comes back. Then you start to notice the earthworms returning, and the friability and the texture of the soil improving. Anyone that knows anything about soil can tell by the smell of the soil whether it is healthy or not. That research has led to a boom worth millions of dollars, not only to the farmers of Australia but also to the Australian economy.

There were two things that kept this country out of recession during the GFC: the mining industry and agriculture. One of the reasons that we still have an agricultural industry after eight to 10 years of drought is because of the work done by farmers in research with chemicals such as glyphosate. The sad reality is that, in the last five years, the focus of research by this government has been completely associated with climate change. The great irony is that, while this government gives grants to study the emissions of ruminants and to look at methane emissions from sediment ponds at piggeries and the like, the farmers that have been using glyphosate and zero till farming, largely introduced by their own wherewithal and processes, have done more for the environment of the globe than this government ever will. There is more carbon sequestered in the soils of north-west New South Wales now than there ever has been before. It is a real tragedy that this government has ripped out the funding for agriculture research looking at productions and farming systems and a whole range of other soil sciences and biology and things that the Australian farmers in the Australian economy rely on for their production, and have put their complete focus into climate change. That is going to have a negative effect.

I believe that a new chemical introduced, whether it is a drug for human consumption or a farm chemical for animals or for crop control, does need stringent testing. There is no doubt about that. But I will argue that we need to do a review every seven to 15 years on these tried and proved chemicals. It is not only in agronomy and in cropping but also in the livestock sector. In my time as a farmer, inventions such as the compound rumensin to control bloat in cattle and the continuous work that goes on in keeping ahead of worm resistance in sheep have assisted livestock production. If it was not for the work of the chemical companies in relation with farmers, in many areas now we would not see livestock production. But this continuous fight against the evolution of resistance and the ability for companies to put out new chemicals to counterbalance that keeps Australia at the head. Australian farmers are the most productive farmers in the world, without a doubt.

One of the great things that upsets me in this place is to come in and to hear minister Burke say, when he was agriculture minister, that we need to help farmers to adapt to climate change, we need to help farmers do that. Our farmers are ahead of the game. If you go anywhere in a farming area now you will find that, in competing against farmers from other countries that are highly subsidised, our farmers are more than holding their own. Indeed, they are showing the way. But what does concern me is listening to the contribution from the member from Morton here earlier today talking about Parkinson's disease and the links to farm chemicals. It is just like members from the other side to introduce a scare campaign in an attempt to get this bill through. As the member for Dawson said, this is really a sop to the Greens. The member for Dawson mentioned diuron and the effect that the removal of that will have for the cane farmers in his electorate. It is also going to have a detrimental effect to the cotton farmers in my part of the world.

We must not underestimate the need to be constantly evolving, changing, investigating, researching and introducing new ways to stay ahead of the game. I will talk about the weed fleabane. Fleabane has become the scourge of wheat farmers over the last five or 10 years and there is a constant need to come up with different ways, different methods and different chemicals to stay in front of these weeds.

In conclusion, I do agree with some of the intentions of this bill. I do think that we need to have safe chemicals on our farms. But I do not agree with the process that has been suggested. I do not agree with burdening our farmers with red tape and I certainly will support the amendments that the coalition will bring in to this bill. This government, this House, should be working towards improving the productivity of our land with as much zeal as some in this place are working on regulations and red tape.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This afternoon I rise to speak on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012 on behalf of our local agribusinesses in my electorate. According to a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics survey, 16 per cent of all businesses in my electorate are agricultural in nature. They represent a significant sector of our local economy. They are an important local employer and, notably, a crucial provider of local product which ends up on mums' and dads' kitchen tables right around Australia. So, as you can imagine, I take a very keen interest in all things that affect our agricultural sector. I always have and I always will. When you have worked in the financial and transport sectors in rural towns, as I have, you get a keen appreciation of its vital importance to our primary producers.

We should never underestimate the challenges that the rural sector has faced in recent years, and continues to face. There is a lot of discussion and concern about the many factors impacting on the future of the manufacturing sector. Well, the agricultural sector has similarly faced a whole range of challenges, including those mother nature throws their way. Earlier this year, many producers in my electorate were devastated by the Australia Day floods. Their fields were destroyed, their crops were washed away and the devastation to farm infrastructure was enormous, notwithstanding the 10 years of drought they had prior to that and, for my dairy farmers, notwithstanding the price pressures that are currently under consideration in that industry. They are putting up with shrinking margins and, in some cost of production numbers, dairy farmers are working for as low as $7 per hour. I have and will continue to work with local farmers to ensure they are able to recover and rebuild as soon as possible.

One of the most important things any government can do, aside from the direct practical assistance to help rebuild, which is welcome, is to ensure that their policies do not add to the financial pressures already affecting farmers. The fact is that this bill, in its current form, is likely to add to costs for agribusinesses. For that reason I support the amendments put forward by the shadow minister for agriculture and food security, and state my opposition to the bill in its current form.

I remind the House that the CEO of CropLife Australia, Mr Matthew Cossey, has stated that 'In its current form this bill will only serve to hinder agricultural productivity.' I am sure it is not the intention of this government to put a bill up that inhibits our agri-sector. Why on earth would any government in its right mind plough ahead with legislation that is likely to hinder productivity? Well, like so much of what this government does, this legislation has unintended consequences. In resolving to solve a problem they have managed to make it worse. In trying to cut red tape, they have actually added to it instead. In attempting to make the processes more efficient, they have actually made them less efficient. In attempting to strengthen the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, they will in effect burden and weaken it with this legislation. The bottom line is that the red tape impost in this bill will flow on to agribusiness and ultimately to consumers.

The background to this bill is quite extensive, beginning with the 2008 Productivity Commission research study into the existing arrangements for the regulation of chemicals and plastics in Australia. Amongst other things, the Productivity Commission concluded:

The efficiency of APVMA assessments could be further improved by rectifying the currently dysfunctional arrangements for registering low regulatory concern products and through greater use of international assessment data.

In 2010, the Labor Party promised that it would improve the regulation of agricultural and veterinary chemicals in Australia through the APVMA. They said, 'A key focus will be on the efficient assessment of lower-risk agricultural and veterinary chemicals while ensuring that higher-risk agvet chemicals are assessed appropriately.'

After a discussion paper and public consultation, this bill was referred to the House of Representatives Standing Committee for Agriculture, Resources, Fisheries and Forestry for inquiry and report. That report was tabled a few weeks ago, on 28 February 2013, and contained a considerable dissenting report from the coalition MPs expressing concern over the impact of the bill and recommending that the 're-registration requirement' be removed and that the commencement of the bill be delayed for 12 months. These are the two amendments that are before the House at the moment. These two amendments make a great deal of sense given the level of concern in the sector about the unintended consequences of the bill.

Labor's haste is typical of their approach. They say, 'Something must be done, this is something, so we must rush this through.' It is not a considered approach; it is thought-bubble politics and it certainly is not in the national interest.

Yes, there are issues with the current operation of APVMA, yes, we need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of assessment processes, and we must ensure that APVMA has the capacity to identify and review suspect chemistries. Absolutely. But this bill is not the answer. Imposing an extra regulatory burden, in the form of a mandatory re-approval and re-registration scheme, is not the answer. This provision on its own has the potential to make costs skyrocket, not to mention adding another layer of red tape and bureaucracy, rather than removing it.

The coalition is not arguing that the current system is perfect. Nor do we contend that every aspect of this bill is incorrect. In general, the bill makes a number of changes to arrangements to manage agvet chemical registration and improvements to compliance and enforcement arrangements, most of which try to improve efficiency. As such, industry supports the measures, and so do we.

Certainly the intent of the bill is right. However, in its entirety, the bill only adds to the problem. Our amendments will improve the bill and ensure that the implementation of those aspects that are positive can proceed in an effective manner. We believe that the timeframe for implementation of this legislation is simply way too short—commencement of the bill is scheduled for 1 July this year.

We believe that APVMA will need to put in place a risk management framework and road test it to ensure that the application requirements can be met and other efficiency measures are supported. It must be remembered that the APVMA operates on a cost recovery basis. In 2010-11, payments of application fees, levies and annual fees by the ag-vet chemical industry were about 96 per cent of the APVMA's total revenue. So you can see that when the APVMA get a hit they are going to pass it on and it is going to end up coming out of the pockets of our farmers.

In its 2010-11 mid-year economic and fiscal outlook statement, the government announced, as part of the reform agenda, $8.75 million of funding over four years to implement reforms to the regulation of ag-vet chemicals in Australia. This funding is not ongoing. It is just over the forward estimates and will apply only to the initial establishment and implementation of the reforms. When you have a mechanism in place where you have an organisation searching for fees and levies, it becomes a great place for them to generate coin. In other words, the burden of the ongoing assessment regime will be placed on the ag-vet chemical industry, who in turn will pass it on to farmers, who then have no choice but to pass it on to consumers. And the government wonders why the cost of living continues to skyrocket under their policies. Every regulatory burden they impose puts pressure on the cost of living. That is why the coalition has committed itself to cutting unnecessary red tape by $1 billion. Our amendment to this bill will have that objective in mind: wherever possible we must reduce the regulatory burden on Australian business, on Australian farmers and on the agribusiness sector.

The major regulatory burden is the mandatory re-registration and re-approvals process, which requires that a product after a certain time period must go through the approval process again, regardless of whether there have been any issues whatsoever with its use. The product may have been on the market for many years being used safely without any problems whatsoever, but it seems it still must go through the whole process again after a set period of time. This is clearly a huge regulatory burden. There has been no cost-benefit analysis as to the benefits of this mandatory re-application process. We do not know that this huge burden will improve safety one iota. And the fact is that the existing regime already contains the capacity for reviews if there are any safety concerns.

Existing section 31 of the ag-vet code allows the APVMA, at any time, to reconsider an approval of an active constituent for a proposed or existing chemical product, the registration of a chemical product or the approval of a label for containers of a chemical product. In addition, it can invite the public to propose products which should be reconsidered. So there are already mechanisms for review. There are very real concerns that this an onerous process of mandatory review and will ultimately mean that currently used chemicals are removed from the market, particularly those which are off-patent and will no longer be available to the farmers who rely on them.

The coalition do not seek to make amendments lightly, but we believe they are vital to make this legislation workable. I would have thought that all members of this House would share the objective of ensuring that the agricultural sector is not further burdened with unnecessary red tape. I can tell you that so many agricultural businesses are doing it tough, from our sheep industry to our cattle industry to our horticultural industry. As I move through my electorate, I am constantly being met by people who say, 'This is as tough as we have ever seen it.' Certainly, those in my electorate who are just beginning the slow rebuilding process after the floods do not need extra costs down the track because this government acted in haste yet again to introduce legislation that ultimately does more harm than good. That being the case, this House should not support the legislation in its current form. I certainly will not be supporting the legislation in its current form. On behalf of the agricultural businesses in my electorate, I implore the government to rethink the haste with which they are implementing this legislation, to rethink the extra layer of red tape that they are imposing and to amend this bill as the coalition has proposed.

I associate myself with the words of my coalition colleagues, who represent farmers and the agricultural sector and live and breathe and rely on that revenue to make communities vibrant. In my opening comments, I spoke about the ABS statistics that show that 16 per cent of economy in my electorate is derived from the agricultural sector. I suggest that the minister who introduced this bill into the House, whose electorate is no more than 42 square kilometres in size and within a stone's throw of the Sydney airport, has little or no understanding of how this will impact people on the ground. In fact, I do not know many sitting Labor members who actually represent agricultural electorates.

Of late, three types of bills have been introduced into this House. The first type of bill they bring in introduces some type of new tax or places some type of impost on mums and dads where money is being taken out of their pockets. Secondly, they introduce bills that give more power to their union mates. Thirdly, we see the introduction of bills with some type of increased regulatory burden. So this style of bill is not a new concept for the current Labor government. I implore you, in considering this legislation before the House, to revisit the legislation and accept the amendments to be moved by the coalition. They are sensible. We do accept the intent of this bill, but we implore that our amendments to be moved to this bill be accepted.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment Bill 2012, even though it is 2013. As all the speakers before me have informed the House, this bill aims to enforce the mandatory re-registration of existing chemicals which are crucial to efficient, effective and successful farming in Australia. The coalition will seek to amend this bill by sensibly removing the mandatory re-registration component of the bill, an aspect which Labor committed to in their 2010 election campaign to placate the Greens. This is yet another attack on primary producers, who are already doing it very tough in an industry that is under siege from many interest groups, plus the green groups, as well as external factors such as the stubbornly high Australian dollar and increasingly cheap imports from abroad.

Currently, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, or APVMA, have a rigorous regime in place that ensures any products which are dangerous are weeded out and subject to scrutiny. In fact, many primary producers will argue that the current regime goes well beyond providing a safety net and instead has become an unacceptable impediment to efficient farming, given the outlandish claims that are being used to try and ban fenthion, an issue that I will go into in more detail later.

It is important to note that the current bill retains all of the existing mechanisms for triggering a review. I repeat: this bill retains all of the current mechanisms which would trigger a review. So what is the point of this? It is because the Greens, again, have leant on this government because they have this hysteria about issues to do with agriculture et cetera. They do not understand. Currently, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the man who has successfully closed down a cattle industry in the north of Australia, presides over this along with the Minister for Sustainability, Water, Population and Communities, who comes from a city based electorate, Watson. They really do not appreciate what farmers and orchardists are doing out there in wider Australia. This is what I, the growers and the farmers perceive as an overregulation of the industry. Given that such reviews are paid for by industry itself, through full cost recovery, mandatory registration is just an inefficient mechanism that will not only waste the levies paid in good faith by the industry but further erode the trust that farmers have had in these bureaucratic arms of government. This trust is now becoming very short in supply.

The bill was meant to improve efficiency and reduce regulatory burdens. Instead, in true Labor fashion they have managed to put forward a bill which will do the complete opposite. Even when Labor sets out to make life easier for business, they somehow manage to wrap industries up in either more red tape or more green tape. This is why the coalition will be cutting unnecessary red tape by something like $1 billion should we be fortunate enough to win the next federal election. Labor have increased compliance costs by so much in the past five years that the coalition needs to ease the burden on industry not only to ensure its growth but, in many cases, to ensure its very survival.

Following the very good speech by the shadow agriculture minister, the member for Calare, the member for Moreton, Graham Perrett, had the audacity to freely admit that he has a few farmers and growers in his electorate and his only appreciation for the subject comes from the fact that he has been the Brisbane markets in his electorate. I suppose he would have the same authority because he has an accountant somewhere in one of the suburbs! The member for Moreton went on to say that he has been approached by mothers who have expressed grave concern for their children about the effect the chemicals may have on them. He then proceeded to tell us that his expert knowledge of this is to argue aspects of the bill which are not based on evidence or science but just a couple of mothers at the market saying they are worried about apples being sprayed. This goes to the heart of the debate surrounding the overregulation and red tape which is strangling primary producers in this country.

Those with no understanding of the issues that farmers are facing have a disproportionate voice. In other words, the noisy lobbies in these debates are why we have thousands of farmers walking off their land who are either fed up with the unnecessary burdens placed on them or just cannot continue. As the member for Calare stated, we are a nation that was built on the back of primary producers. But now the inner-city elites and the green ideologues are trying to stamp out farmers across this country. In fact, they have a great antipathy or hate for farmers. The irony is that, by endeavouring to overregulate and tax farmers out of existence, they are allowing overseas producers to become more attractive to the markets that we have in Australia and imported products. Now, wouldn't it be crazy if we stopped an effective home-grown industry and imported the bulk of our fresh fruit and vegetables from overseas, where they do not have the same regulatory regimes to make sure that sprays and chemicals do not infiltrate food during its processing and growing cycle. That would be a really perverse effect.

I note that the Greens Party website promotes food security, as does Labor's National Food Plan. However, both parties are seeking to join hands in a kumbaya fashion and increase the regulatory costs incurred by chemical users, which of course will be passed on down the line to the very consumers that they reckon they are representing—the ones the member for Moreton spoke about in his markets in Brisbane. They are the ones who will be paying more. Labor does not seem to understand the link between compliance costs and the inevitable increase in the cost of living, which has been brutal since the member for Griffith and the current Prime Minister took over this parliament.

I will not even go into Finance Minister Penny Wong's deregulation agenda, because it really has backfired on her. She is actually increasing costs by something like $8 million instead of reducing compliance costs. This is red tape and compliance at its worst. It is killing our domestic industries, as evidenced by the report that showed that 900 firms have been placed into administration every month. That is more than during the height of the GST in this country. The impact of the carbon tax has been specifically cited as a primary factor for many of these closures. However, we have a Labor government in this country who refuse to listen to the coalition on matters of economic significance despite our warnings which, sadly, have proven to be accurate time and time again.

In relation to the impact of the bill, I refer you to arguments being put forward by coalition members and by industry expert Matthew Cossy, the CEO of CropLife Australia, who said:

In its current form, this bill will only serve to hinder agricultural productivity.

The supporters of this bill in its current form argue that there needs to be safeguards to protect Australians from suspect chemicals. Well, there really are. As I have already said to you, it is already in the current bill. The coalition support this. However, we do not support this unnecessary overregulation which brings extra costs with no gain to public safety.

Implementing a mandatory re-registration process for the existing chemicals provides no additional safeguards, as I have said. We only have a small market in Australia which will likely result in chemical manufacturers avoiding costs associated with processes, and primary producers will be left without effective products that are vital to component production. In other words, large producers—and we know that they are multinationals—will see Australia as a place to avoid.

That brings me to a current issue in my electorate that has been initiated by the APVMA and poses a huge risk to fruit growers in my electorate and across Australia. In fact, this has national ramifications which something like this current bill would exacerbate. The APVMA are attempting to ban the use of fenthion, which is the common name of Lebaycid. This is the last remaining effective control against the devastating Mediterranean fruit fly, or medfly. It would devastate the industry across Australia if this last effective control was removed. It would open the industry up to attack by fruit fly from Queensland to Tasmania and right through to my state of Western Australia.

The evidence put forward to date has been torn to shreds by the Hills Orchard Improvement Group, led by a fierce advocate for fruit growers in the Perth Hills region, Brett DelSimone. Over the past 18 months, Brett and his team, representing this group of growers, have led the charge against an ill-conceived decision by the APVMA to ban fenthion from Australia, leaving orchardists unprotected against a pest that, if left unaddressed, would wipe out the fruit growing industry in Western Australia. I have been to the presentations and, yes, I do believe that the area-wide control mechanisms such as baiting, orchard clean-ups and the sterile fruit fly program are excellent, but they need the cover of the fenthion spray while they put this in place. South Australia was able to get rid of the Mediterranean fruit fly because of a combination of these tools—and, interestingly, these sterile flies are actually bred in Perth and sent to South Australia, even though we do not use them ourselves in our own state.

The APVMA have only found green interest groups to support them, the same small groups who are today being appeased by this flawed legislation. Given Labor's support for this defective legislation in this House today, the feigned break-up between Labor and the Greens is clearly not a done deal; it resembles more a phoney lovers' tiff.

I challenge any member opposite to travel to an orchard—or at the very least pick up the phone and speak to an orchardist—in my electorate; you will soon understand the exasperation that these growers are feeling because of the overregulation of this industry. Given that any industry lobby group could ban or delay the re-registration of a spray like fenthion, the orchardists could be put out of business. Their stone fruit crops, their apple crops, even the grapes of the Swan Valley, would not be able to be protected against the attack of the Mediterranean fruit fly if fenthion were banned. Yet, should any interest group decide to involve themselves in this legislation, the re-registration of fenthion as a spray could be stopped, which could then see growers' crops devastated for at least two, or more, years while they further investigated the veracity of any claims against this spray—which, by the way, for 60 years has not resulted in one recorded health issue, yet they still talk about wanting to ban it.

Bills such as the unamended version of this bill before the House will hinder rather than assist farmers across Australia. As elected members we have the responsibility to resist the onerous regulation and duplication of red tape; however, I know that only members on this side of the House have the motivation and resolve to ensure that primary producers are protected from such regressive legislation. I say to the crossbenchers who live in rural electorates and have fruit growers and orchardists in their areas: you will want to think seriously before you allow this overregulation of an industry whose members protect themselves by using cover sprays such as fenthion.

We cannot be beholden to such green ideology. We on this side of the House want to make life easier for small business—and an orchard is a small business—so that we can free up the private sector. The bill currently before the House does the complete opposite. It enlarges an already bloated bureaucracy and increases pressure, by further costs, on an industry that is already under significant pressure.

I implore the House to adopt the coalition's amendments—and you know what those amendments are; they have already been read in the House—to ensure that the bill's original intent is accomplished and to avoid an increased regulatory burden on Australia's primary producers. It is our responsibility to make sure that our industries remain competitive at home, rather than seeing overseas imports take over, when a home-grown industry like ours could survive if given the opportunity to survive, with less regulation, less government interference and a smaller bureaucracy interfering in their daily lives.

Debate adjourned.