Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This legislation in clause 9 talks about varying the processes that were in effect on 1 July 2009 by a legislative instrument, and the intent of that is to create a disallowable instrument. So, irrespective of findings, the intention is to bring it back to the political process so that it can be disallowable.

The law we are operating under at the moment is effectively coalition made law, and the problem with that is that we are seeking to put in place arrangements which would override the basis of a scientific assessment and return it to the political process. I can assure you that in my time in this place, whenever we have been seeking to examine the processes which have been used in determining import risk analysis, we have been looking at the process and the science and there have been plenty of complaints, for example, from New Zealand in relation to apples, from Canada in relation to pork and to salmon and from the European Union in relation to a whole lot of other things, suggesting that we in fact were not proceeding on the basis of science but were proceeding on the basis of a political assessment of the matter.

This particular bill will lend a lot of weight to the arguments that those countries will make in the future if it is passed by the Australian parliament. It will be saying that we have got all these processes but we are going to implement a process where, ultimately, everything is disallowable by the Australian parliament—so science has gone out of the window and it becomes a political football and we will run the extreme risk of assessments being taken to the World Trade Organisation and findings being made against this country, a situation which must be resisted. A finding against this country in relation to trade allows a finding as to what is an equivalent retaliation. That country can then take that retaliation in any area it chooses, against any commodity that we are exporting to that country.

I say this on the basis of a limited assessment of this bill. This bill is recently created. Private members’ bills are often created in a hurry and they are often created for political rather than legislative purposes. One could well have been excused for thinking that that was the purpose of this bill, and indeed I believe it still is.

In relation to the urgency of dealing with this matter, why is this more urgent than dealing with the fairer private health insurance legislation or the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme pieces of legislation which took us days and days and have been through this place twice? I think there were 29 coalition speakers the second time the CPRS went through this chamber, and we knew that all but two of the coalition were voting against the bills. Yet they were prepared to take up the time of this chamber with those bills, which I suggest were much more timely than this piece of legislation, given that, with an import risk assessment running for two years, if this legislation is passed by both houses of parliament it would sit there with nothing to act on for that period of time. If it were to do anything else it would be retrospective, and this chamber has resisted the concept of retrospective legislation for decades.

What we have is a rushed piece of legislation. There is apparently a proposal—perhaps it is not going to be put now—that this bill be rushed through this chamber in time for it to be talked about as early as tomorrow as legislation that the government must pass in the House of Representatives. We have seen the commencement of another scare campaign about beef when, in reality, the minister’s responsible decision has made sure that there will be an assessment responding to concerns in the community. There will be a proper assessment. The rural and regional affairs committee intends to look at other matters, and that will continue. (Time expired)