Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to contribute to the debate on the Export Control Amendment (Streamlining Administrative Processes) Bill 2022. This bill is vital to our country and highly important to my electorate in the Hunter. The agriculture sector is hugely significant to our nation, and it plays a massive role in the economy back home in the Hunter electorate. Agriculture is part of the backbone of our economy in the Hunter, and there are so many communities who are built on and rely on this industry. We are very lucky to have, in my unbiased view, the best dairy farms and the best cattle farms in Australia, and as a food enthusiast there is no electorate in the country that is better suited to me. I have been lucky enough to have done a fair amount of travelling around Australia and the world in my life. I've tasted dairy products, meat another agricultural products from around the world, and I can honestly say that the people of the Hunter have been gifted with some of the highest-quality and, most importantly, best-tasting products in the world right here in our backyard. I am extremely proud of what we produce in the Hunter, and it brings me even more pride to represent the hardworking farmers who give their lives to producing such world-class products. I want farmers in my electorate to know that this bill will help you get even more reward for your hard work.

Of course, I can't speak on agriculture without giving some special mention to the wine industry. Driving through the Hunter it's impossible to miss the beautiful green vines running through the landscape. These vines grow delicious grapes that eventually are turned into delicious wine. If you don't yet have your hands on some wine from the Hunter, I suggest you do, and, if you need some, just talk to me! I make this point because I will not sit back and allow countries like France and Italy to claim that they have the best wine in the world when the best wine I've ever tasted is in my own electorate of the Hunter. We need to get this wine out to as many countries as we can as quickly as possible. Currently, the top exporter of wine is France. Forgive me if I'm being overly optimistic here, but I reckon that, with the help of this bill, that title is coming to Australia, led, of course, by the mighty Hunter Valley, the home of the best wines and the best vines in the world.

This government wants to help an already booming industry to thrive even more. The agriculture sector has ambitions of becoming a $100 billion industry by 2030. With the support of this government, which is committed to this sector, I'm sure they will reach the goal—there's no doubt about that in my books. This bill is essential to ensuring the target is achievable. This bill will streamline regulation and cut red tape, both of which are critical for growing the Australian agriculture industry's exports and market access. We know that Australia has the best agricultural products in the world, and, as many citizens of Australia have made me the unofficial 'minister of burgers', I think I'm in a good position to speak to the quality of our beef industry, especially when it comes to a nice chunky patty on a bun with lettuce, cheese and tomato. It's delicious, and let me assure you I've had my fair share of those, as you can probably tell.

I think that all countries should have the pleasure of being able to enjoy our agricultural products. That's why it's so important to make it easier to export the products from our agricultural sector. I want as many people as possible around the world to feel the happiness that I do when I feast on a good Aussie steak, so I'm extremely happy that this bill will support the modern export system that will provide a streamline process for exporters and improve delivery of services. This is good for all people around the world. The more people enjoying what we have to offer here in Australia, the better. But, more importantly, this is good for our farmers. Here in Australia it will be a very welcome change for communities in the Hunter, who will be able to get their products to the export market quicker and easier than ever before. These changes just make sense.

The bulk of Australian-grown produce is exported, and farmers rely on an effective regulatory system to assist them in doing so. Export control legislation needs to remain current and fit for purpose. It needs to keep up with the developments in importing country requirements, changing regulatory objectives and industry practice advancements. This is exactly what this bill is going to achieve. This bill will make information-sharing provisions within the export control legislation more flexible. It will allow relevant information to be effectively shared with regulatory partners, exporters and other key stakeholders while maintaining the appropriate control on sharing certain kinds of information—a modern bill for a modern global market, making sure the agricultural sector does not fall behind.

But this bill isn't just about making sure our sector keeps up with its international competitors; it's actually about helping it surge ahead of the pack. It's about making sure that quality Australian produce gets on the plates of our friends and neighbours faster. We already have a strong reputation for high-quality agricultural produce, and this bill is only going to further enhance this reputation by supporting the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to streamline complex administrative and authorisation processes to access and utilise the export control information that it already holds. The improved information-sharing arrangements ensure greater flexibility in tailoring for export control purposes, and will make the export control legislative framework more effective, efficient and future focused.

Deputy Speaker Chesters, you may be asking yourself why we have to do this. The answer is simple: the current act is just not up to scratch; it's just not good enough in supporting an industry working towards becoming a $100 billion industry by 2030. There are inefficiencies in the current act that prevent the sensible sharing of information that may help strengthen Australia's trade position, and this government is here to fix that.

Streamlined information-sharing requirements can assist with rapid delivery of information that can be essential in trade situations. For example, when an importing country may hold a request for further information about a consignment of fresh produce at its port. Instead of being caught up in red tape and unnecessarily complex procedures, this information will be provided with more ease and our friends across the seas can get their hands on our produce even quicker than ever before. And what's better than fresh Aussie meat, fruit, veg and dairy?

Australia has a competitive edge in the international agriculture export market and we need this bill in order to maintain the edge by being able to effectively use and repurpose export control information, which will increase our ability to innovate and make gains from those innovations. The changes that will be implemented through this bill are nothing radical; in fact, the amendments in this bill are consistent with border information-sharing work already occurring across government. It's simply about making sure that our agriculture sector can be exported to more buyers around the world more quickly and more easily.

This is a government who cares about farmers and looks at practical ways to help grow industries, like helping them to make exporting more efficient. This is a government that understands how important the sector is to the country and it is committed to ensuring the high value that Australia places on its agriculture industry is longstanding. That's why we are implementing this bill, to help grow the agricultural industry, to help out our farmers and to help out the country as a whole. This is a simple and practical way to grow the agricultural industry to support it in achieving its goal of becoming a $100 billion industry by 2030. I commend this bill to the House.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to concentrate my remarks on a very famous person in Far North Queensland, John Gambino. The mango is one of the more popular fruits that we have available in supermarkets in Australia. I myself had an orchard of 400 mango trees. This is a backyard industry really; you have a few hundred trees as an adjunct to serious farming. That was how it was explained to me when I put in 400 trees. John Gambino and Robbie Vennard grow Bowen Special Mangoes. Please remember you buy Kensington Prides, which are Bowen Special Mangoes, the Australian mango. Don't buy the others—they're not as good. Having said that, there are various markets that do prefer other mangoes.

These two gentlemen, one in Bowen and one in Mareeba, 700 or 800 kilometres apart, put in 5,000 trees, so we went from a backyard industry to an industrial industry. They pioneered the modern mango industry. It was very seldom you saw mangoes on the shelf in a supermarket, but now they are always there, and that's a result of these two gentlemen. Both of them pioneered exports as well, but Robbie Vennard is out of the industry now, as I understand it.

I will come back to John Gambino. John stayed as an owner-operator when most others corporatised their operations. With corporate farming they go broke, and then they sell up at 50 cents in the dollar. The huge plantation in Townsville has gone broke three times. So, where the tree cost him $390 to plant and bring it through to production five years later, it would have cost them $450. But, because they went broke, it was sold up for 50 cents to the dollar. This has happened three times—their tree goes for $70. Whereas, the owner-operator, who hasn't played the corporate game, has to pay off a tree worth $369. Hence, the corporates win and the Australian people lose. Corporates will always end up being foreign owned.

To return to John Gambino, he pioneered the export market. He had contracts, which he had pioneered in Hong Kong. When Hong Kong became part of China, they still took his bananas—and I applaud Scott Morrison for speaking out against China on the issue of COVID—but, by the same token, the result was that China cut off $29,000 million worth of exports going into China. We'd never punished anyone ever, to our shame. If you want to play the game that the international market plays, you play it tough, but we are the little fairies in the garden when it comes to international trade. So John Gambino had his mango exports to China cut off, and China said: 'Oh, no, you have diseases. You don't fumigate, so we're not taking any.' It was obviously influenced by COVID as well. When I last visited John, his son Sam said he was down the paddock. I asked what he was doing down the paddock and he said, 'He's picking mangoes.' He's 83 years of age and he's down there with workers, some of them from overseas, picking mangoes! They're just fighting the banks, as all farmers do—I emphasise that.    He's no different to any other farmer in Australia, but at 83 he still has to go down there with the workers. When I went down, there was about 500 metres of mangoes piled this high, and I said, 'What's that?' He said: 'They were the mangos that were going to Hong Kong, and I've just got to get rid of them. That's my crop of E2s for the year, gone.'

When I was the Minister for Northern Development and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs a hundred years ago, we realised that we had to put a fumigation plant in Cairns, which is one of the centres of fruit and vegetable growing in Australia. About six or seven per cent of Australia's fruit and vegetables come out of that area; 95 to 97 per cent of Australia's bananas come out of that area, and that's the most-sold generic item in the supermarkets, to quote one example. There's also a massive production of avocados out of that area, and, of course, it's the mango capital of Australia.

Returning to Gambino, it's important to say that this is a very important man. He calls meetings at Mareeba and gets 600 and 700 people turning up to them. I don't know anyone in Australia these days who can call a meeting and get 600 or 700 people to turn up. He pioneers the mango industry for Australia, and if there is a more beautiful fruit on earth I haven't tasted it. So, we needed a fumigation plant, but the government went down before we got it in. We realised that we had to build it, but in the last two months we weren't able to do it. Thirty years later, we still haven't got a fumigation plant. It is quite justified for a country to say, 'If you want to send bananas, mangos or whatever to us, then we don't want any of your diseases; we want it fumigated before it leaves Australia.' Australia has no restrictions at all. Anyone can send anything to Australia. We have no restrictions at all.

As a net result of these free market policies—'We're not going to put a fumigation plant in; if people want a fumigation plant, they can put it in'—we lost the tobacco industry and the 2½ thousand to 3,000 jobs in Myrtleford, Victoria. We lost the peanut industry. We lost the flower industry—we had 12 very big flower exporters, and I'm not going to go into the details of how the government's free market policy has destroyed them. Both the pig industry and the grape industry went down because of free market policies. Believe it or not, it was the party that was formed by farmers that did all this! The once-great Country Party has become a fawning sycophantic addendum to the Liberal Party, but I don't think even the Liberal Party would have done this. The Labor Party didn't—they did it to wool, yes, but that was the only thing they deregulated. Some vestiges of Labor still understand arbitration, but a farmer needs arbitration just as much.

We're talking about exports. Don't talk about it and say, 'I'm for it.' Build a fumigation plant in Cairns. It is desperately needed. Build a fumigation plant now if you're fair dinkum about exporting fruit and vegetables from this country. Maybe seven per cent of Australia's entire fruit and vegetable production comes from the Tully-Mareeba-Atherton axis, also Lakeland now—a quadrangle, if you like. That percentage will become greater and greater, because we have the dry season and we have ample water. Three-quarters of Australia's water is in Far North Queensland. So we have the water and we have the dry, because you don't want wet conditions for a lot of these crops.

In summary, I return to John Gambino. He calls a meeting, and they have, under Wayne Swan, a national summit on rural debt, which was at horrific levels and is higher now than then. But Wayne Swan did something about it. He called them all in, and the Mareeba Rural Action Council, of which Gambino was chairman, proposed that if their farmers' income did not meet welfare levels then the government would top it up with a family farm assistance grant. Now one in five farmers have got the family farm assistance grant. Their income has not met a welfare payment. That's how bad we are in farming in Australia.

Our cattle numbers are down 32 per cent, our sheep herd is down 72 per cent, our dairy herd is down 13 per cent and our sugar cane is down 15 per cent. I don't know about grain; we don't have grain in northern Australia. But they're the big boys, and that's only because of the intervention of the Prime Minister, overturning the National Party decision to allow bananas in from overseas, where people work for $5 a day. We've got to pay $20 an hour, and so we should. If you stand in the hot sun humping bunches of bananas which weigh almost as much as some of the young kids working in the banana fields, you deserve $20 an hour. But then you ask us to compete against people who are paid $5 an hour. Are you the promoters of slave-labour wage levels in these other countries? If you allow products produced by slave labour into this country, you are promoting and continuing slave-labour wages in Texas in the United States, with the wetback labour; in Africa, where people work for nothing; in China, where people are made to work for nothing; and in India, where people, because of poverty, work for nothing—all these countries.

Now, we don't want our workers working for nothing. The greatest pride that the Australian people have is that we have arbitration. But the arbitration was removed from the farmers. You wrecked and destroyed that. One part of my electorate, the dairy part of my electorate, had the highest suicide rates in Australia, which was as predictable as the sun rising. You deregulated the dairy industry and you knew exactly what was going to happen, and yet you proceeded to do it.

We had, I think, 2,000 dairy farmers in Queensland. We have now got about 300 to 400. In the Kennedy electorate, probably the biggest dairy-farming area in Australia, we had 260 very big farms. I said at a meeting the other day that we had 58, and I was corrected by the state member, who is a member of our party. He said, 'No, it's 48.' There was a lady there who said, 'No, you're wrong; it's 38.' So we had 250, and now we've got 38, and a lot of them exited in the most terrible way possible.

So, if you're fair dinkum or you're just making a noise—and that's all I ever hear in this place—I don't see any reality out there in the world. I don't see any factories being built. I don't see any new farms being opened. I don't see any dams being built. I don't see any mass high-rise condominiums for tourists being built in Queensland. Of course, we have the Gold Coast, but for the first time ever I can't see a single high-rise being built on the Gold Coast. That most certainly is the situation in the greater Cairns-Mackay-Whitsundays area. Nothing is happening out there.

I conclude by saying that John Gambino needs a fumigation plant. He can't possibly build one for himself. It's got to be built for the whole industry. It's got to be based in Cairns, where we take the fruit and vegetables out of the Cairns area. Actually, I'll rephrase that: it's got to be based in the Atherton Tablelands, where we have a direct route now—thanks to Anthony Albanese, no less. We've cut 2,000 kilometres off the round trip for our fruits and vegetables from Far North Queensland—tropical fruit and vegetables—to go to the markets in Victoria, and of course their temperate fruit and vegetables have had 2,000 kilometres cut off the trip to the million people in the North Queensland market. So we are poised to be able to do that, but we need the fumigation plant.

I will take advantage of the opportunity today to pay a very great tribute to a very great hero: John Gambino, who got welfare payments for Australian farmers for the first time in Australian history, with the rural action council. I have awarded a Good Australian Award to every member of that council, because they are good Australians.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the second reading of the Export Control Amendment (Streamlining Administrative Processes) Bill 2022. I start by making the point that I represent the electorate of Sturt, which is in the city of Adelaide. If you look at a map of my electorate, you wouldn't think that it was resplendent with agricultural businesses, but in fact, in the proud history of South Australia from European settlement, Adelaide has always been a city that has serviced the agricultural industries that surround it. That's always been the economic genesis of Adelaide as a metropolitan area, until the Playford era of the 1930s and beyond, when we happily diversified into industries, particularly the car industry and other manufacturing sectors. But it is still the case that the primary production industries of agriculture and mining are the two very significant elements of South Australia's economy, and metropolitan Adelaide therefore still is extremely reliant on jobs that come from the agricultural sector and, of course, exports more broadly.

I have some very significant exporting agricultural firms that are headquartered in my electorate of Sturt. Thomas Foods are a good example. They're rebuilding, as we speak, their significant abattoir that was destroyed by fire back in 2017, from memory. That is, of course, in the electorate of Barker, but their corporate functions are in my electorate of Sturt. My metropolitan electorate is also very proudly the home of the Magill estate, Penfolds' original vineyard and winery. Grange Cottage is on that site and, of course, lends its name to the very famous wine now called Grange—formerly Grange Hermitage—which is, I think, fairly uncontroversially considered the greatest wine produced at least in Australia—but, we might even claim, further afield still.

So export, particularly agricultural export, is very important to my electorate. I also spent almost 10 years in the wool industry working for a business called Michell, a very significant South Australian early-stage fibre-processing business for Australian wool. It was established in 1870 and is still owned by the Michell family—the sixth generation of the family involved in the business and the fifth generation owning and running the business. In my time there, the division that I ran was 100 per cent involved in export. Everything that we produced went overseas in some way, shape or form through the supply chain, so I had a lot of experience with the interesting challenges and idiosyncrasies of dealing with exporting to many, many different countries and the way in which rules and regulations can be complicated and can change depending on who you're dealing with and when.

This bill, as indicated in the second reading speech from the minister and also the contribution from our shadow minister, is being supported, I think, unanimously. I wasn't certain whether the member for Kennedy was speaking for or against the bill, but I feel like he's not going to divide on it, so I'm certain it's going to pass the Chamber and the parliament, and I look forward to that. From my electorate's point of view and from my experience in the wool industry, I'm very keen to see us do everything we can to support our export industries, particularly in the agricultural sector, and to have better flow of information between government departments where that can be improved compared to some of the restrictions that are in place right now. It's vitally important for our country. We've obviously had the ABS statistics—just in the last couple of days, I think—confirming another record monthly trade surplus: over $12 billion. I think last year in one of the months we hit $16 billion, which is absolutely phenomenal.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I accept the point that iron ore, coal and natural gas are doing the lion's share of making sure that we stay in surplus, and that's an important thing for people to remember about our economy, too.

When I studied international trade more than a decade ago, one of the more famous examples of the issue around export data—commercial-in-confidence versus giving free giving access to important trade statistics—was the company Phillips, a very famous Dutch electronics company. It was the case that if the Dutch government released certain data on electronics export values et cetera for the whole economy, they would be revealing information about Philips because they were the only electronics manufacturing company operating in that country. That meant there were always important provisions to make sure that commercial-in-confidence information was not published invariably or accidentally or because it was necessary under the legislation. I understand the need to keep sensitive information that companies need to provide to government as commercial-in-confidence where it is necessary for the business.

I also understand completely the need for this change and how it would benefit the government in supporting industry to grow our exports and to make it a lot easier for government to share information between departments. I certainly understand that different organs of our government are all working together to support growing our exports. We know how important information is for DFAT, who obviously have responsibility for undertaking trade negotiations by looking for opportunities to negotiate FTAs and make sure Australian businesses are going to benefit to the maximum from the sorts of negotiations that we will set as priorities in those bilateral and multilateral fora. Of course, DFAT need to be in possession of the most up-to-date and comprehensive data in those areas, and surely we want them to be so that they can make sure that what they're doing in these discussions will maximise the benefits for Australian industries. We wouldn't want them not to be in the possession of certain information that another department could have provided to them about Australian exports in sectors, in product lines et cetera.

We want all levels of government to have all the information they need to deliver in the best interests of Australian exporters and in times when Australia is in dispute with the WTO. We want to make sure that government agencies have all the information that they need, if we are engaged in disputes to protect the interests of Australian exporters. At WTO level we want to make sure that they have all the facts that they need to make the strongest argument in support of Australia's interests. Obviously, we understand government supporting individual exporters to properly understand some of the issues around documentation et cetera. Going back to the example of the wool industry, I remember we often had interesting requirements suddenly foisted upon us, particularly from the European Union if I'm honest. There would suddenly be the miraculous requirement for a health certificate for a dramatically transformed product like spun worsted wool and yarn for some reason like because it was a sample quantity instead of a commercial transaction. It would then be necessary to spend a couple of thousand euro to have a vet come to look at a spindle of yarn. That's fine, and we always followed the rules. We're always proud of the strong biosecurity framework that we've got, and it's also important for our businesses and our exporters to properly know and understand, perhaps with support from our government, what the various elements are when it comes to engaging in new export opportunities et cetera.

Clearly, we can do better to make sure that all levels of government are in receipt of the best information possible from other agencies, who at the moment have significant challenges to provide the information that they've got that would freely advance the best interests of our businesses and our economy, and we should support that. For those very simple reasons I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to speak on this today. The coalition, as has been said here today, supports the passage of the Export Control Amendment (Streamlining Administrative Processes) Bill 2022. It sounds very dry. However, the impacts of this are not, and we've heard the member before me speak very well about this.

This bill provides that regulatory framework, especially for those agricultural commodities—which is something that, as a dairy farmer from the South West of Western Australia, I'm particularly focused on in this place, constantly. Given that around 70 per cent of our agricultural produce is exported, our farmers do an amazing job in this country. We feed 25 million people with some of the best-quality food in the world, and I'm extraordinarily proud of them. They also produce some fabulous fibre in various ways. That is used around world to produce some amazing-quality products. But we do need to make sure that they're supported, that the process and industries are supported, that there's a streamlined, fit for purpose process and that they're able to operate as efficiently as possible.

The bill that we have in front of us allows the better information management that we've seen discussed here today. It will cut administrative red tape—the bane of business, no matter whether you're a new exporter or an existing exporter—and even across the various sectors and government industries and agencies, just clarifying and streamlining it and making it efficient and effective. That collective information sharing will be done in the right way, securely. That is very important to us all in how this will be managed. The export sector relies on this, and I think we always need to be looking at this to do it better and more efficiently.

I focus constantly on data confidentiality. No matter at what level—business, industry, government or other agencies that are involved—one of the greatest challenges we all collectively face is the protection of confidentiality of information and, for us as farmers and producers and the exporters, a lot of the IP that sits within our businesses that go with that. Across the board there is a genuine need to maintain confidentiality, and in this we will come under ever-increasing pressure and stress rom both commercial activities and malicious actors. It's something that I am very concerned about.

Those safeguards for that information, across this streamlining, need to be very robust and constantly reviewed, because we know that there's a lot of money to be made and that there's been a significant bleed of intellectual property across many businesses and entities that sometimes don't even know it yet, because of the malicious attacks on their information and their sites and other areas. We need to provide this to the countries that we're dealing with and for DFAT to assist with trade negotiations and the potential for further trade barriers—the non-tariff barriers that we see regularly and have had a lot of experience with in the EU. They're very cleverly disguised and will continue to be. We're seeing the latest iteration of some of that now.

This bill needs to keep Australia at the cutting edge globally because we're often the target, because we are such efficient producers and because the rest of the world—our competitors in markets—is looking for very different ways to actually increase the cost to our producers. We often operate in a very challenging environment, on one of the driest continents, but we produce some of the most amazing products. We have less water, less fertiliser and less land, and we still do it. We're expected to do it and we do it very well. But, when we look at some of those that we're hearing with some of our trade deals, who are concerned about Australia's competitiveness, we are constantly having to be aware of and alert to the intent to undermine Australia's export capability and the fact that we can deliver globally and produce to the highest quality in the world. That creates a challenge in some other parts of the world and with our competitors in this space.

We have to be on the front line of everything we do, and our Australian farmers have to be efficient, otherwise they're out of business—and that includes in the export space—because of the high cost of doing business in Australia. Even in infrastructure or whatever you want to do, we are up against layers and layers of red tape and green tape. We are always behind the eight ball and, inevitably, if you're a price taker in a commodity space, it comes back to you managing your own business even better and often absorbing the extra layers of cost that go with applying the rules and regulations at local, state and federal levels. It's something that I'm very, very conscious of.

Equally, our agricultural producers have the capacity to help feed the rest of the world when we know there are global shortages of food, especially with the actual content of the food itself. Often there are a lot of interesting parts to food production and if there's actual nutritional benefit from the food that is being produced. I have confidence that, in Australia, that is what we do, so it is really important that we continue to be able to export high-quality food, fibre and products across the board.

We've heard so many instances in this space where there have been challenges, and I hear it from my local exporters as well. The commitment the coalition made to the Regional Accelerator Program and to the Export Market Development Grants Scheme in its last budget would have helped those small to medium businesses in my patch, and in every other part of Australia, to help get into the export market and promote their goods into new markets, which is a real problem. It was a really good program.

When I look at what we achieved in government, I'm proud of us and the free trade agreements that gave our people market access to: Malaysia, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Peru, Indonesia, the comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership, the PACER Plus and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. What a great record, and what great opportunities these have given those who actually do the work and generate the income and the opportunity out wherever they are.

One-fifth of the Australian population produces roughly two-thirds of Australia's national export earnings. I look at Western Australia and, at the top of the list, you get iron ore and gold and alumina, a lot of which comes out of our part of the world, base metals and wheat. The port of Bunbury in my own electorate had 15-plus million tonnes of export products pass through it in 2022. The silicon that is being used in solar panels is actually manufactured in my part of the world. There's the fabulous beef from Harvey Beef and V&V Walsh, who export chilled and frozen beef and lamb to China. We have milk and dairy and juices with Harvey Fresh—what a great company!

Then there's lithium. We have the best hard-rock spodumene at Greenbushes, which is just inside the member for O'Connor's electorate. It is being manufactured by Albemarle in my part of the world. They will have five trains of production capable very soon, in the next couple of years, and the demand is so great that it's already forward sold. We also have Talison in that production.

We have Alcoa and South32 exporting through the port. There's 11-plus million tonnes of alumina going out through the port of Bunbury—just incredible! And it's done very efficiently, very effectively, and we need to make sure they can continue to do this no matter what the market is. There are mineral sands with Iluka.

There is the fabulous Margaret River and the region's wine. This is interesting. Margaret River is a standout in the export market. Margaret River is contributing 59 per cent of WA's bottled wine export value while actually only being two per cent of the national crush. That tells you it's a recognised international brand. When I'm out and about representing my electorate, people sometimes ask me where I'm from. Because I'm rural and regional, sometimes there is a frown when I talk and so I start at the top of my electorate and work to the bottom. Yarloop; Harvey, where I farm; Bunbury—I start to get a few smiles; Busselton. When I get to Margaret River—bang! That is the international reputation that has been created by a quality product and people marketing a quality Australian and Western Australian product internationally. One of the great challenges, I think, besides biosecurity and the other challenges we face around competition and non-tariff barriers, is that of maintaining our reputation globally as that producer of fine quality. We're known for clean, green production. That is a reputation we can never, ever afford to give up, so it's a real challenge for us with what we do.

Something I'm particularly proud of is that we also have the only ocean grown baby abalone, off the tiny town of Augusta, right at the southern end of my electorate. They're looking at growing this business. This is just a fabulous product. We also see a lot of woodchips going through the port, and we see the grain, as I have mentioned.

We have highly productive farmers using a wonderful South West irrigation system. This system is a gravity fed system that supplies really good quality water to the majority of the system. However, there is one area, the Wellington Dam catchment area, that needs desalination to provide even better quality to the farmers that are on that southern end of that South West irrigation system. I want to see that continue to be supported through the National Water Grid approach, and I want to have that pumped and piped. There are a lot of savings that have been made through piping the northern section. There have been significant reductions in channel losses and efficiencies on farm. It underpins the agricultural sector in the South West and the production of that food.

We've got some really wonderful examples. Take carrots and onions. We've got a range of people sitting in this room. My shire, Harvey shire, is where 30 per cent of Western Australia's carrots are grown. A vast amount of these are exported to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Singapore, and that generates about $90 million a year. About 90 per cent of WA's onions are grown in Harvey shire, and 20 per cent are exported. And it's about the irrigation water and the access to quality water, always. The slogan for South West irrigation is, 'Where water flows, food grows.' There's nothing more critical than that. There is much more that needs to underpin that that we have supported. That is the basic infrastructure to support the logistics, as well.

There's just one other I wanted to mention in the two minutes or so I've got left. A local earth-moving logistics company, Piacentini & Son, designed and manufactured, in my patch, what's called the Panther. This is like the old-fashioned low-loader. They call it a float; I call it a low-loader. It will go on to any mine site. It's got significant hydraulics—it will lift up to 360 tonnes—on what we would call a low-loader. It's very well balanced. The machine that you would drive or lift on, up to 360 tonnes, has a 2,300-horsepower LeTourneau in the front of it. It is just a remarkable piece of gear, able to be manufactured almost in any size and designed and manufactured in my part of the world using local tradespeople and local apprentices that we helped support in government. What a great result. This is being exported globally out of the port of Bunbury. I'm just so proud of what they have done. This is a cutting-edge piece of equipment and is recognised by those operating globally as such a great piece of gear.

We've got some wonderful people who are innovating all of the time in this space, and we need to support them through this type of legislation, which streamlines the process at each end but protects the confidentiality of that information. I'm pleased to support this bill, but I am completely focused, as well, on supporting our exporters, small, medium or large. There are a lot of small businesses quietly exporting, just getting on with their jobs, and looking to have an opportunity to do that in a streamlined way that doesn't add significant cost to their businesses and to the costs of exporting. Given that we sit in a pretty unique part of the world with some great challenges, a more streamlined approach to this—while protecting their interests and the confidentiality of their information—is really critical to them. I look forward to us protecting that and fostering that and even focusing further on that in the future.

Kristy McBain (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to acknowledge the members for Kennedy, Sturt, Forrest and Hunter for their contributions on this legislation. You can see how passionate members of this place are, and I want to acknowledge the member for Forrest's deep interest in agriculture. I've had many a conversation with her previously about it.

The Export Control Amendment (Streamlining Administrative Processes) Bill 2022 will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the export control legislation by streamlining the administrative processes for information sharing and making other amendments to improve administration of the act. It will reduce administrative burden for industry, the department and other stakeholders and ensure our export legislation is fit for purpose and responsive to stakeholder needs. It will allow for more information to be shared more expediently with importing countries and other government departments in appropriate circumstances. This in turn will enhance our ability to use export and trade intelligence to build and sustain our international market presence.

This bill supports appropriate sharing of relevant information whilst ensuring information that could cause harm is protected. This is consistent with the broader information-sharing reform work being considered across different portfolios. It is also consistent with key agricultural policy initiatives such as the Busting Congestion for Agricultural Exporters initiative, to reduce red tape and streamline processes for Australian exporters. This bill will also make minor but important amendments to simplify processes and improve effective administration of the act. These changes contribute to a modern, future-looking export regulatory system that can support the growth of Australian agricultural exports in existing and new markets. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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