Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Chair, if you recall, when we finished on this last session I was halfway through speaking on my amendment. I see the minister looking at me a bit strangely. I think I will go back to the top of my comments on the amendment so that we can reacquaint ourselves with where we were up to.

So this is an amendment. As you would be aware, the Greens are opposing this bill because we are concerned that the process is in fact taking us backwards in how we deal with ag-vet chemicals in this country. If this bill is going to succeed, which I understand from the numbers it probably will because the ALP are not supporting their own changes to the process, my amendment seeks to put in place a process to deal with chemicals that are judged to have unmanageable risk and those in the highest risk category.

We believe there is no doubt that some agricultural and veterinary chemicals have damaged human and environmental health—I do not think that is in dispute—and continue to pose risks to both. Risk management should be at the core of any registration program, and those chemicals that pose unacceptable and unmanageable risks should not be permitted in Australia. We want the approach to risk taken by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, the APVMA, to reflect contemporary science in toxicology and regulatory approaches in other countries. We are concerned that this in fact is not going to be the case.

Without the re-registration scheme and the associated regulations which this bill pertains to, there is still too much discretion being given to the APVMA to determine undue hazard to the safety of people and the environment, without a suitable framework under which to determine that risk. This amendment is no substitute for a proper re-registration scheme, but it will add to the criteria for reassessment and will operate to ensure that there are some clear and transparent decision-making criteria to guide the APVMA in its decision making about what to reassess.

This amendment asks for the reassessment to occur as soon as possible but is not time bound. This is less constraining than the re-registration process, which would have required the APVMA to undertake reassessment of those high-risk chemicals within 12 months. This amendment also calls on the APVMA to monitor what is happening internationally and to engage in reassessment when the UK, New Zealand, the USA or Canada bans a chemical product.

This amendment builds on the criteria we negotiated with the previous government, which were circulated to members, and is an attempt to build on all the work that has been done to get a more thorough process in this country. We supported the work that was previously done. We are disappointed the ALP is no longer supporting its own amendments. In fact, there are many chemicals that still need to be assessed and we are now going to tie up both the community and producers in ongoing debates and campaigns to get chemicals assessed, whereas through the previous amendments that were made in this place we had a proper process.

What we are trying to do is build an assessment process so that all people who are concerned about these issues actually understand the process and so there is a more defined process. At the moment, with the government taking away the amendments that were made, we are being taken back essentially to the bad old days when we all had to campaign to get chemicals assessed. There are still a number of grandfathered chemicals and, despite what both the ALP and the government have said, there are many chemicals that were grandfathered and that have not had contemporary assessments. As I articulated earlier, some of the previous work has been lost, so we do not know which chemicals were looked at by states. I commend the amendment to the chamber.