Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Regional Investment Corporation Bill of 2017, and I move the second reading amendment as now, I hope, circulated in my name:

(1) Clause 4, page 5 (after line 3), after the definition of start day, insert:

vacancy, in relation to the office of a Board member, has a meaning affected by subsection 20(3).

(2) Clause 16, page 14 (lines 2 and 3), omit the clause, substitute:

16 Membership

The Board consists of:

(a) the Chair; and

(b) at least 2, and no more than 4, other members.

(3) Clause 20, page 15 (after line 23), at the end of the clause, add:

(3) For the purposes of a reference in:

(a) this Act to a vacancy in the office of a Board member; or

(b) the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 to a vacancy in the membership of a body;

there are taken to be 4 Board member offices in addition to the Chair.

(4) Clause 29, page 18 (lines 15 to 17), omit the clause, substitute:

29 Quorum

At a meeting of the Board, a quorum is constituted by:

(a) at any time when the Board consists of 3 Board members—2 Board members; or

(b) in any other case—3 Board members.

This amendment will be seconded by the member for Whitlam, and I understand he'll reserve his right to speak. There's a golden rule when representing Her Majesty's opposition, and that is that, when considering government legislative proposals, we should always stick to good policy, look at the quality of the bill being presented to the parliament to measure the extent to which it reflects the policy which is trying to be achieved by the government and, of course, look at the extent to which it upholds the standards and traditions of the Westminster system. The proposal in this bill is bad policy, and the bill being presented to the House, while it might reflect the government's intentions, does little to uphold the standards we expect in this place, particularly as they relate to ministerial and executive accountability.

The Regional Investment Corporation is another of the current agriculture minister's boondoggles. It's a big pork barrel. It's designed to do one thing only, and that is to recover Nationals party votes in just one part of the world in this instance. That part of the world happens to be Orange.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They lost a seat there, didn't they?

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am reminded by the member for Whitlam that Orange was in the news quite a bit throughout 2016. That's where the New South Wales Nationals party had a massive swing against it and in fact lost to the shooters and fishers party a seat which I think they had held at state level for its whole existence. So none of us were surprised that the current Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, the current Deputy Prime Minister, chose to place his boondoggle in the city of Orange.

By the way, I love the city of Orange. It's a great city with great people. The other thing to note about Orange is it's in relatively good shape. It has a very strong economy. It's one of our leading regional economies, with a good critical mass, a strong population and a vibrant economy in a vibrant community. The Deputy Prime Minister presents this as part of a number of boondoggles and pork-barrelling exercises, as a sort of injection into the Orange economy—a much-needed injection, he would argue. I would argue that you can never do too much for a regional economy, but Orange wouldn't be the first port of call if you were genuine about trying to stimulate a regional economy by placing a government agency or authority there.

The Regional Investment Corporation, or the RIC as it's come to be known, will do two things. It will administer failed concessional loans for farmers. I say 'failed' because this government has now been in office for four years and has presented the parliament with various iterations and versions of its concessional loans program, and each and every one of them has been a failure. They have been implemented hopelessly. As a result, farmers have decided it's all too hard or, alternatively, decided that in this very low interest rate environment, where money is pretty cheap, it's not their major challenge at the moment so they see no value or efficacy in going through all the drama, including challenging or damaging the relationship with their local bank. They don't see the point in taking up these loans.

Of course, the current Deputy Prime Minister chooses to blame the states for this. None of us will be surprised by that. To the current Deputy Prime Minister, it's always someone else's fault. The reality is that the fault lies with the current Deputy Prime Minister, both for his design of these loans and for his incapacity to implement them in a way that makes them attractive and accessible for farmers who really need the help.

The second thing that this RIC will do is administer the Deputy Prime Minister's water infrastructure loans. This is an extraordinary thing in itself, because these water infrastructure loans look like they will be made to just about no-one. They're heavily conditional on matching funds, for example, and I have seen no evidence that these loans will be taken up. The local member for the area suggested he was going to have 200 employees as a result of this boondoggle, as I saw in his local media in Orange. If we have 200 employees in the RIC, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. The existing concessional loans are administered by the various rural adjustment authorities in each state. While it's impossible to put an exact figure on the number of people in the states working on the loans, because people move from project to project, I think it would be safe to suggest that at the very most 10 or 12 people would be dealing with these things in the states. I know the water infrastructure loans are involved here too, but the idea of there being 200 employees, or even 100 employees, which I think has been the current Deputy Prime Minister's assessment or prediction, is just ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous.

It is very clear that this whole Regional Investment Corporation is all about the Nationals trying to win back their base. And, of course, it's part of a broader push which the Deputy Prime Minister describes as decentralisation, but which I would describe as a broader boondoggle on a pork-barrelling exercise. We have seen the relocation of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority from Canberra. Where to?

Mr Stephen Jones interjecting—

The member for Whitlam helps me again: to Armidale, the current Deputy Prime Minister's electorate. It is costing the taxpayer $28 million—I think that's the latest figure—but also causing enormous disruption for the authority and completely undermining its capacity to deliver what it's asked to do, and that is ensuring our farmers have access to pesticides and other sprays and veterinary medicines in a timely way. I say 'timely way' very deliberately because that is critical, particularly when we think about the seasons our producers and growers face. That's one point.

Now, of course, he boasts that he's been forcing rural research and development corporations to move to regional areas as well, where we see, again, tidy placements in National party heartland; the high cost of the RRDCs, including the transactional cost; and the loss of highly qualified staff with a strong corporate memory. There's a real theme developing here, and it continues with the proposal for this Regional Investment Corporation.

Now I'm going to deliberately read into the Hansard the key points—there are many more; this is not an exhaustive list, but these are the key points—which take priority in Labor's concerns about the bill. First of all, in presenting the policy and the bill, the government has failed to provide any coherent policy rationale for the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation. It's offered mixed messages when enunciating the policy objectives for the establishment of the Regional Investment Corporation. It's failed to undertake a cost-benefit analysis. Now, that's familiar! We saw the very same thing with the relocation of both the APVMA and the rural research and development corporations. It's given no confidence that the $28 million of taxpayers' money being spent to establish and operate the RIC delivers good value for the Australian taxpayer—no effort whatsoever on the part of the current Deputy Prime Minister to do so.

The RIC has been deliberately structured to enable legislation that minimises parliamentary scrutiny or any veto of ministerial directions. This has been noted, very importantly, by the Senate Scrutiny of Bills Committee. The government has failed to provide sufficient oversight of the activities of the corporation. It's failed to properly consider the effectiveness of the size of the board with regard to the range of expertise requirements and safeguards against political interference. It's extended the scope of the board and/or the CEO's capacity to delegate powers and functions beyond what is prudent governance. It's gone to great lengths to establish a constitutional underpinning, including the invocation of the external affairs power—the external affairs power!—but it's failed to address well-founded doubts about various matters, including concerns expressed by, again, the Senate Scrutiny of Bills Committee.

The government plans to have new future loans administered by the Commonwealth—these are the farm concessional loans—but existing loans, some of which will now extend for another 10-year period, will still be administered by the states. So we're going to have a two-track loan system, with some loans still administered by the states and other loans now administered by the Regional Investment Corporation. And, of course, the government intends to keep the ministerial review of the operations of the act a secret. That is extraordinary. That is not normal practice for any government.

I refer to the Senate's Scrutiny of Bills Committee. I won't be reading all their concerns into Hansard, because I simply don't have sufficient time, but I will quote the following:

1.122 The committee requests the Minister's advice as to why it is appropriate for all of the ministerial directions under clauses 11 and 12 not to be subject to disallowance and sunsetting, and why it is appropriate that there is no requirement to table 'other directions' made under clause 12 in the Parliament.

1.123 The committee also requests the Minister's advice as to why there is no requirement to seek the Board's advice prior to the making of a direction about where the Corporation is to be located under subclause 12(5).

They go on and on. At 1.132 they say:

In order to facilitate appropriate parliamentary scrutiny of the operation of this Act (and the new Corporation), the committee suggests it may be appropriate for clause 53 of the bill to be amended to include a legislative requirement that any report of the review be:

•   tabled in the Parliament within 15 sitting days after it is received by the Agriculture Minister, and

•   published on the internet within 30 days after it is received by the Agriculture Minister.

This is just extraordinary stuff. We saw with the APVMA a very, very considered approach to avoiding parliamentary scrutiny. The now Deputy Prime Minister knew that the forced relocation of the APVMA was highly unlikely to run the gauntlet of both houses of this parliament—highly unlikely. How did the government know that? They know there is no policy imperative. They know it's a bad idea. They know it's a shocking waste of taxpayer money and they know it's going to destroy the capacity of the APVMA to service our farmers, our vets, our thoroughbred breeders and every person who owns a companion animal in this country. They know that.

So what do they do? They go digging and digging to find a general policy order under the purvey of the Minister for Finance and use that instrument so they can avoid completely the scrutiny and veto powers of this parliament. That's not democracy. That's not the Westminster system. That's not how we do things in this country, but it's how we have been doing things since the Deputy Prime Minister signed his coalition agreement—the coalition agreement that's secret, the one I'm currently fighting the Prime Minister on in the Federal Court, where he's using taxpayers' money to keep it a secret. If he wants to argue that it's not a document of government or a document of a minister, why is he using taxpayers' money to fight me in the courts? If it's a political document between him and the now Deputy Prime Minister, let them use their own party funds or their own money to defend my court action. It's a basic foundation of the Westminster system that, when a deal is done to allow people—in this case the Prime Minister, the member for Wentworth and the Deputy Prime Minister—to hold those positions and to take government of this country, the Australian people are entitled to know what's in that document.

We see it happening here again this evening. The draftsmen, at the direction of the now Deputy Prime Minister, have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the operations of this Regional Investment Corporation. The now Deputy Prime Minister wants to run this like his own fiefdom. He wants to use this as a pork-barrelling machine to do whatever he wants and to curry votes in any area he sees fit—in this case, in the area of Orange, where they had that disastrous by-election.

Even the National Farmers' Federation, in their submission to the Senate inquiry, recommended amendments be made to address the flaws in this bill. Were they embraced? Were the National Farmers' Federation listened to? No. Now we learn that the government itself is going to put forward an amendment. That's a funny thing, because the government majority on the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee recommended the bill be passed without any amendment. They seemed to think it was perfect in both its construction and policy intentions. Yet, after they issued their report, the government and the minister himself decided that some amendment might be necessary. The problem is he's putting forward one amendment, I think, to the size of the board. I think he had it as three—always a good number if you're seeking to exert maximum influence on a board—and now his amendment allows it to go to a maximum of five or something. So he's picked up one recommendation of the NFF. What a major change that is! What a departure from the government majority recommendations of the Senate committee—extraordinary stuff! What about all those matters identified by the Senate Scrutiny of Bills Committee? They are numerous: constitutional underpinnings, lack of parliamentary overview, extraordinary and excessive delegation powers. All these things have been completely ignored by the minister. Why did he embrace one amendment?

I think we have at least some of the answer. I still find it extraordinary that he only found it within himself to make one change, but you can be pretty sure that we have some movement on the blue carpet, because the now Deputy Prime Minister knows this bill is not going to secure passage in the Australian Senate. When you think about it, that is pretty extraordinary, because those with only passing interest in this, I admit, will see this as a reasonable sort of thing to be doing. They're scratching the heads: 'The states are administering the loans. The Deputy Prime Minister said they're not doing a very good job of it, so he's going to establish this new place.' It says a lot for the Deputy Prime Minister to be facing defeat in the Senate on what seems, on the face of it, to be a simple proposition. It says that they're starting to wake up to his modus operandi. They're starting to work out that on every occasion he will put his political interests ahead of the interest of others, including Australian farmers, and we see that in the parliament today. I've been here 21 years, and this is one of the worst bills I've ever seen. I've seen a few ministers fall in my time; in fact I took a departure myself, one time.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You recovered well, though.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Member for Whitlam. I've never seen a minister dig in like this minister. I've never seen a bloke dig in like this bloke, at the expense of his government. At some point, the friends come up and say: 'We love you, mate, but, you're just too of much a drain on this government. This is too big of a distraction. It's time to go. We're sorry, but it's time to go. You can't keep doing this to your government.' But not this bloke: he's going to dig in, and he doesn't care how much he destroys the joint. The Deputy Prime Minister's interests will come first—the ego writ large, unfailing in his confidence in his capacity to do the job for the Australian people. I've seen no sign of that.

In the four years he's been agriculture minister, I can't name more than one thing he's done for the sector. We hear lots of talk, 'Money on the table, beef prices are up'—as if he somehow had anything to do with that. He's going to build a dam here, a dam here and a dam everywhere. He'll never build a dam; I'll bet my house on it. Labor in government built water infrastructure projects, the Tasmanian Midlands project being the finest example, but in four years, the now agriculture minister has built no dam. He doesn't even have a dam plan; he doesn't have anything. He has money on the table he knows will never be picked up, because he knows the other parties, including the states, don't have the capacity to match the funds, but he rolls on with the rhetoric: 'Beef prices are up and we're going to build a dam, and we'd have it built by now if the Queensland government had come into line.' Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!

The fact that the Senate is poised to reject this is a sign that people are waking up to that fact. As I said in the House the other day, this bloke is all hat and no cowboy. He doesn't have any vision for agriculture. He doesn't have any strategic plan. He has no view about sustainable profitability, no view about the efficient allocation of our natural resources, no plan to build up the value curve in the previous markets—nothing at all. It's all spin to his base. He's spending all of his time worried about what One Nation's going to say next.

I say to all those out there working so hard in Australia's agriculture sector and in agribusiness: you are right to start waking up. This guy doesn't have your interests at heart. He thinks about one thing and one thing only, and that's himself, his political interests and the prospects of what I now call his 'dual National Party'. The sooner he pulls the pin and does the right thing, the better for all concerned, including those in the agriculture sector.

Debate interrupted.