Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens support the motion to have the Wheat Marketing Amendment bill 2007 referred to committee. We believe it is essential that sections of this bill are referred. We believe that substantive sections of it need to be thoroughly reviewed. We believe there is unnecessary haste to force this bill through this place. While we acknowledge that there are areas that need to be dealt with more urgently, we believe that those should be dealt with first and the rest of it thoroughly reviewed and considered. That allows not only the Senate but also the community the time to adequately consider this bill. Because it is a major issue to the community, the Greens believe that there needs to be adequate time given.

We saw the debacle that occurred with our last system for marketing wheat. We need to make sure that we get it right this time to support our farmers and give them security and also to ensure our place internationally so that our name is not dragged through the mud of the international wheat scene again. We find the urgency quite worrying. This bill is being rushed through the parliament with what I believe to be indecent haste. It is obviously politically motivated. There has been a very strong debate within the coalition. I would suggest that there was some consultation carried out with the community by members of the coalition. That was obviously done in private. We believe that this debate needs to be fully aired so that we can have a public debate about the future of our wheat marketing because it is of such crucial importance to our farmers, our community and our regional centres. We are talking about the future of regional Australia when we talk about the future of our marketing system.

This debate is being rushed through so that the government can shut down debate on this issue in the run-up to the election not only within the coalition but within the community. The only urgent part is dealing with the veto. That could be dealt with while the rest of it is subjected to the proper scrutiny of a full inquiry of the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport. I am a member of that committee. I know that we go through things with a fine tooth comb and I believe that is the appropriate way to look at this bill.

We saw the complete disaster of the previous arrangement. We certainly do not think that we should be exposing Australia and our farmers to that particular debacle again, because we do not believe the marketing of our wheat will survive another scandal like that. The way this bill is being rushed through means that it deliberately avoids scrutiny. Pushing it through will not enable us to have a full and complete debate on it and analysis of it. This bill has major ramifications for our future and the way that we sell wheat and we should have the opportunity to carefully consider it, to look at whether the appropriate approach is being taken and also to look for any loopholes.

We see loopholes coming up all the time. In fact, we were just debating some this morning on the safety net legislation. We had an inquiry into that, limited though it was, and the government introduced amendments to address some of the issues that came up during the inquiry. I strongly suspect that there may be the same sorts of loopholes written into this legislation, particularly as it has been so rushed and had such little time for outside scrutiny. I know that the coalition has had some consultation with some stakeholders on the bill, but this does not allow adequate time for people to do a proper, full, detailed analysis in public of the provisions of the bill. We believe, as I said, that the community needs to be able to have that debate in public.

The bill provides for the government to designate a company to hold the single desk and export privileges and make significant amendments to the Wheat Export Authority. What happens next year if farmers cannot put together an appropriate body is of concern to us. The failure of oversight is one of the biggest lessons to be learnt from the bribery scandal. We need to ensure that the oversight provisions are up to scratch and meet the accountability needs and that adequate safeguards are put in place. These are the sorts of issues that the community wants to look at and to be able to comment on.

The Greens can see no reason why the bill should not be referred to committee to allow the committee to look at it, to receive submissions and to look at these very significant issues. We strongly believe that, to maintain faith with the farmers of this country and the community, we should be referring this to committee. We will be supporting this motion. We are very deeply concerned, as I have said in this place before, about the contempt that is being shown to the community and to farmers by the fact that this is being rushed through in this manner.

Amendments to bills that are made on the run when further consultation is carried out before the bill comes before us is of concern. This is essentially what is happening here, which indicates to me that there are still issues that need to be looked at in this bill and that we should be allowed time to adequately consider them without the bill being rushed through at a minute to midnight, which is virtually what we will be doing tomorrow. At a minute to midnight we will be looking at this bill. Everyone is dead on their feet already, so not only are we not even referring it to committee but we are dealing with it at the very last minute. That is not the appropriate way to legislate for the future of wheat marketing in this country. Doing this as the Senate is rising for the winter session, when we have been dealing with very intense issues for some considerable period, does not enable a fully considered debate. We certainly support this motion.