Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the remarks of the chair of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, Senator Nash, and note that since 2001 the government has provided a 40 per cent contribution towards the cost of providing export inspection and certification services to the meat, grain, fish, dairy, live animal and horticultural export industries. The cost of the services provided was met through a 60 per cent cost recovery from industry and a 40 per cent government contribution. That was in recognition of the fact that the process could have been done more efficiently and that our competitors in many of those export markets had their costs met by their respective governments.

That decision was renewed several years later, so many in those export sectors really did not believe that the government was going to change its position. There certainly was no consultative process with the export industries to make them understand that this was coming to an end, but they had a very clear understanding that reforms would be implemented so that the costs of the service would be significantly reduced. There was no evidence that reforms in AQIS in particular were reducing costs. If you talk to each of the industry sectors, they say that a lot was said about the potential for cost recovery, but not much was actually happening on the ground to demonstrate how those cost savings might be achieved and how we could be more competitive.

I feel very conflicted about this because it was the unanimous view of the committee that we need reform. Nobody is suggesting that the current way of AQIS conducting inspection and certification services cannot be improved. Everybody agrees that we can improve—that there have to be better ways of doing it, that the duplication of service by state and federal bodies must be overcome and that there must be ways of implementing reform. Certainly all of the agricultural sectors that we spoke to agreed that we must have reform.

I do not want anyone to be under any misapprehension here that the parliament does not support a reform agenda. We support a reform agenda. We want to see costs come down. We want to see these services delivered in the most efficient, most modern way we possibly can, and that includes implementation of information technology to better facilitate ways of dealing in a sector, higher skills training, better accreditation at industry level and so on. So that goes without saying. But it is a blunt instrument when an industry is held over a barrel, essentially. The government have come back and said to the industry, ‘We expect to go to 100 per cent cost recovery this year and in return we will put $30 million into delivering on the reforms.’ The industry quite rightly said, ‘Effectively, we are paying for our own reforms in terms of that cost recovery.’ The government have argued: ‘No, you’re not. We’re recovering the costs of what we do and we’re putting in this $30 million that you are paying in order to deliver reforms.’ Well, it is a bit of an academic argument because the upshot is that industry is going to be paying and the reforms will be implemented, but the industry has little confidence that the reforms will be implemented in the 12-month time frame. That is the next point: how quickly and efficiently can we get the reforms in place? We had quite a bit of evidence from people that there is no way they are going to get approval from some of their export markets to change the protocols, to accept the change processes, in the 12-month period.

The other point to make is that we are in the middle of a global financial crisis. Our rural communities are also struggling in those export markets in the face of a higher Australian dollar. We are talking about giving massive support across the car industry and in all sorts of areas of the economy, but we are saying to the farmers at this time, even with the high Australian dollar and the global economic crisis: ‘We are going to go to 100 per cent cost recovery and, what’s more, we are even going to introduce new fees.’ The government argue they are not new fees, but they are. If someone paid zero last year and they are paying $50,000 this year for the registration fee for an abattoir, that is a new fee, as far as they are concerned. I have had a letter from an abattoir in Western Australia which will effectively be paying an additional $109,000 this year. That is a lot of money for a business.

The point here is that the parliament wants the government to invest in the reform process but we also recognise that farmers are very nervous about whether or not these reforms can be implemented in the 12-month time frame, as is being suggested. So what the government needs to do is commit to the reform process and also commit to providing the rebate for the 12 months in order that the reform process can be delivered. All the evidence that came before the committee was that there is no dissent out there in rural Australia: they want reform. We want reform. But we are also mindful of what this 40 per cent cost recovery will do in the country in the next 12 months—that is, it will send a lot of businesses close to the wall, if not beyond it.