Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

Could I just further explore something with the minister and perhaps seek some guidance. I take his point about perhaps having some sort of survey. What I am trying to get an understanding of is what the criteria and requirements will be in terms of what I guess I would call geographical acceptance. Are we looking at an Australia-wide type survey, at which point you will look at a percentage of farmers' lowering of fertiliser usage? Are you talking region by region? That was actually put forward during the inquiry process, but at that point the department had absolutely no advice for us about the size of those regions and what the definitions of those regions would be. This has actually been one of the problems, and remains the most significant problem, in front of this piece of legislation, in that there is not a sufficient amount of detail to be able to look at this piece of legislation properly; it is simply not there. So could the minister give some guidance as to what the criteria would be to conduct that type of survey so we can ensure that the definition and determination from that would then meet the common practice criteria?