Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Export Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 and cognate bills and indicate that the opposition will be supporting the legislation. The Export Control Act 1982 provides the basis for ensuring that exports meet the requirements of the importing country. Labor welcomes this legislation, which will provide a fairer and more consistent approach to cost recovery for services provided by the Department of Agriculture to exporters. The legislation seeks to remedy technical defects and inconsistencies, which will in turn allow the Department of Agriculture to recover an estimated $1.9 million each year for the provision of export services for commodities which are currently excluded from the cost recovery mechanisms. Those items are cut flowers, dried fruit, fodder, nursery stock, nuts, seeds, timber products, tissue culture and ratite meat. I am not sure exactly what ratite meat is. I do not know if you know the answer to that, Deputy President Parry, coming from Tasmania. There are a few rabbits down there. But all of those things are currently excluded. Principally they were excluded because, at the time that the legislation was originally introduced, they were not items that we were exporting.

So the effect of this legislation is that it tidies up and standardises the definition of prescribed goods across seven statutes. These changes are important because in Australia we export around 65 per cent of our farm products, about 75 per cent of our fish products and some 60 per cent of our forest products. So obviously our international markets are absolutely critical to the health, wellbeing and profitability of our agricultural sector. As we strive to fully capitalise on the Asia led dining boom, a full and efficient cost recovery of export services will be of increasing importance, given how important our brand and image is in those international markets.

I think it is important to note that these are reforms that were commenced under the former government. We were very lucky in the Rudd-Gillard period to have three terrific agriculture ministers—Tony Burke, Minister Ludwig and of course, most recently, Minister Fitzgibbon—who all did a terrific job in this area. These changes are a result of the good work that those people did in the agriculture portfolio. I support this legislation.