Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

He was told there was no more money at one o’clock yesterday, yet by yesterday evening there was $20 million on the table. How can you trust what this government says? How can the industry trust what this government says? They do not know whether there is going to be some money on the table. They do not know what it is going to apply to. We gave the government an opportunity three months ago to work through the industry plans and to put them on the table. We suspended our disallowance motion so that the government could have the opportunity to work through things with industry. We gave them the chance to work and negotiate with industry and to come back and show us the progress on the industry plans. They came to our inquiry last week on Thursday night and told us that all this could be sorted out in 12 months. AQIS said to the committee, ‘We are confident that all of these six reform plans can be dealt with within six months.’ Industry came the next day and said, ‘We don’t think that’s the case.’ The grains industry told us that it would be at least two years. The meat industry told us a minimum of two years for the big items and out to five years. The government appears now to be conceding that this is the case. Where is the confidence that existed last Thursday night? The whole process is a complete shambles. The government will not negotiate with the opposition but can do a deal worth $20 million later that night with the Greens.

What this deal does not do is protect the industry from higher prices. The government is going to charge higher fees. Then it is going to put it into the industry liability accounts and perhaps apply it later to fees and charges. This is what the letter says:

All cost reductions will accumulate to the benefit of affected sectors within the industry liability accounts, potentially enabling downward adjustment of fees and charges for 2010 and 2011, or continued investment in further reforms.

We said that this process needed funding in the first year and that the rebate should continue for the next 12 months. This does not guarantee that. The charges will continue. The only way to guarantee the rebate continues for 12 months is to disallow these regulations. That is the only way industry has any guarantee that the rebate will continue. The government is also saying, as I said yesterday, ‘reform or rebate’. The government needs to continue this process. Everybody accepts that there needs to be reform. The opposition has said all along that there should be reform, and we support reform. What we want is a proper process.

We said at the outset: put the industry plans in place, fund them, implement them and then pass the savings back to industry. That is a reasonable process. And industry sector after industry sector came to us last week and said exactly that: ‘We want the reforms identified, we want them implemented and then we’re prepared to go into a new cost structure.’ Where is the problem with that? Why is that an issue? The problem is that the government is not being straight up and down. It will not deal with the opposition. The opposition spokesman went to meet with the minister and was told there was no money.