Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, stand to make a contribution on the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill 2017—and I note the '2017'. In fact, it was actually 25 October 2017 when this particular bill was first introduced into the other place. The bill was introduced for some pretty sound reasons. The APVMA is the body, or the regulator, which is absolutely essential to the quality of life of Australians, because we need chemicals to protect our crops from pests and diseases and we need them to protect our animals from pests and diseases. It actually underlines and underpins the competitiveness and the productivity of Australia's farmers.

However, agvet has a huge range of other uses as well. It controls pests and vermin in food premises and it kills flies and mosquitos around your house. We use it to preserve timber, control the fouling of boat hulls and keep our swimming pools safe. We also use these chemicals to keep our pets safe and make sure that they're in a healthy environment. Agvet protects our environment from invasive pests and weeds. So the regulation and the safe and effective control of our agvet chemicals is absolutely in the interests of every single Australian. Don't be fooled that this is just about one sector of our economy; agvet touches just about every person in some way, shape or form.

The role of the APVMA is absolutely fundamental to that outcome. The APVMA is there to ensure that these chemicals, as they come into our country and are used, are safe for people, plants, animals and our environment. The legislation that we have before us today, that has been a matter of debate now for some 18 months, amends the agvet chemicals legislation so that we can end up with greater streamlining and better reporting and operational efficiencies within the APVMA. It also deals with—as is always the case with legislation that has been around for a while—the ambiguities, redundancies and unnecessary provisions that exist in legislation as it changes over time. In particular, it seeks to reduce unnecessary regulatory burden on industry by simplifying reporting on these products, and it seeks to make sure that we are always on top of the kind of information that the industry needs to provide to the regulator and that that information is always timely and up to date. Then we can have maximum efficiency and effectiveness in the regulation of this industry, but, at the same time, not place unnecessary time and resource burdens onto industry, so that we don't slow down the productivity of industry and also make sure that we have timely accessibility to the effective chemicals that we need in our everyday lives to keep ourselves, our environment and our pets and animals safe.

The coalition government's $4 billion 2015 Agricultural competitiveness white paperwas an absolute blueprint for taking Australia's agricultural sector from where it was a number of years ago to the powerhouse that it is today. We've seen massive increases in the efficiency, effectiveness, profitability and productivity of our agricultural sector on the back of a number of initiatives that were put forward as part of that competitiveness white paper. Not the least of those initiatives was the increased level of access that we made available to our agricultural sector through the negotiation of a number of free trade agreements. This has seen huge competitive tension return to the Australian marketplace, so we're seeing better prices for our farmers, better prices at the farm gate and more of our products able to be exported overseas. This allows the agricultural sector to play the extraordinarily important role that it does in Australia's balance of payments figures. In fact, in the 12 months to the end of June 2018, agriculture was the sector that was the single largest contributor to our export profitability.

So, as part of this process, following the announcement in the agricultural competitiveness white paper that the government was going to commit $17.1 million to measures to make sure that we improve access and efficiency to agvet chemicals whilst retaining the necessary safety provisions for humans, animals, plants and the environment, we committed to undertake a very extensive consultation process. During 2015 and 2016, we undertook widespread consultation, and stakeholder feedback indicated that there was widespread interest in reform and support for a more efficient and effective regulator. Arising from this consultation, the government then prepared this particular bill, which is the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Operational Efficiency) Bill, and a second bill, which was referred to earlier in somebody's contribution, the Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Legislation Amendment (Streamlining Regulation) Bill 2018, which was introduced into the House of Representatives on 18 October 2018.

The measures in this bill seek to establish an APVMA board and, as part of that, to reduce the annual reporting burden on industry and to provide for civil penalties if false or misleading information is provided to the APVMA. Currently it's only a criminal offence and administrative actions are available. The measures also seek to make minor changes to improve the operation of agvet chemical legislation. So this bill, if we're putting it into simple terms and in relation to the benefit that it will actually give to the industry—and it's absolutely essential that the industry gets access to these particular chemicals—first and foremost will reduce the regulatory burden by simplifying reporting requirements for annual returns. It will enable applicants to address minor errors or missing information identified during the assessment process of an application instead of the application just being automatically refused and the applicant having to pay more money in application fees and spending more time on a whole new application. It's just common sense. It also will enable part of a variation in the application process to be granted. Instead of having it refused and the applicant having to pay more application fees, it will actually enable that variation to occur during the application process. And it will improve the APVMA's governance by establishing a governance board to support a more efficient and effective regulator.

I noted in the contribution that Senator Brown made before that she was particularly critical of the establishment of the board for the APVMA. First of all, it needs to be put on the public record that the board will be the accountable authority. Under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, it must, and will, ensure the proper, efficient and effective performance of the APVMA's functions. It will be tasked with determining the policies, objectives and strategies that must be followed by the APVMA, and the board will help set the APVMA's strategic direction, drive operational performance and set up an appropriate risk framework that will ensure greater accountability.

During Senator Brown's contribution, she made it sound like this was some anomaly within the system, that this board was being set up in some way that was completely counter to the way we operate within the public sector when it comes to how we manage, control or operate our regulators, of which we have many. First of all, we as a government reviewed over 70 corporate and non-corporate Commonwealth entities in deciding what the most appropriate structure for the board of the APVMA should be. It was done in a way that met with all of the guidelines, including the Australian Government Charging Framework, such that any of the cost-recovery arrangements were entirely consistent with that framework.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of a couple of regulators that would fit in a similar mould to this particular regulator. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority operates with a board under a cost recovery mechanism. Airservices Australia also operates with a board and is also a regulator with a cost recovery model. So, just off the top of my head, there are a couple that I can think of, but I'm sure, given that we reviewed more than 70 Commonwealth entities in the process of making the decision about what the most appropriate structure for this particular board was, there are many, many more that will be able to fit into a similar structure as the one that's being proposed by this bill here today.

The other comment that I would make in relation to this is that Senator Rice also made comments about this particular board. Without being overly critical of the contribution that was made by Senator Rice, there seems to be a lack of consistency here in the debate. You can't just conveniently say that you want more regulation—I can assure you that the only thing I ever hear from the other end of the chamber, from the Greens, is that they want more regulation—but then say, when we are providing another level of protection, of assurance, of accountability, of transparency and of governance within a structure that is so tremendously important to the entire Australian community, that you think it's a bad idea that we put that corporate board in place, just as Senator Rice did. You need to be consistent; you can't be convenient in your response.

I suppose the other part of it is that there obviously seems to be an allergic reaction from the other end of the chamber whenever we talk about deregulation or privatisation, as if there is some sort of perfect solution that everything should happen in Canberra and that nothing should happen in regional Australia at all. Everything needs to be controlled from Canberra—central control, central command—and it's almost like it is a crime for us to consider that privatisation is a mechanism that's available to government for the efficient and effective operation of many of the activities that government sees as very important to Australia. I mean, we retain the regulatory control over it through legislative and regulatory instruments. The word 'privatisation' is not a swear word. I think we just need to put aside some of these entrenched negativities towards some of the things that the conservative side of politics believe are a valuable way of preserving taxpayers' money, making sure we get things done efficiently and effectively, and doesn't turn government into the great behemoth bureaucracy that some others would like it to be.

The other thing is that we need to be really careful when we're debating these particular types of legislation. When we are talking about chemicals that, if handled incorrectly, can be tremendously dangerous to human health, to animal health and to our environment, we don't want to actually start rabbits running on conspiracy theories. Once again we've heard some conspiracy theories being thrown around in the debate about this particular piece of legislation, and I think it's very important that we warn against that sort of behaviour. The effective operation of our agvet sector, the role that the APVMA must continue to play, is absolutely essential in the confidence that the Australian public can have and the message that we send to the rest of the world about how good we are at how we regulate in an efficient, an effective and a streamlined way the things that we take so terribly seriously in Australia.

Nobody could doubt that when we came into government in 2013 the performance of the APVMA was something that we considered to be a significant issue to government. We'd heard from industry across the board that the performance of the APVMA was something that was held as a significant inhibitor to the development of our agricultural sector. It was considered to be extremely important that we dealt with a number of the issues that were before us, and that's exactly what this bill seeks to do. The fact that we've been standing here now for 18 months talking about this bill is a sad indictment that we are happy to play politics with something as important as this, instead of actually just getting the bill put through the parliament and getting the benefits that are able to accrue from these changes on the ground so that we can get on with the job that is before us.

But back to the board and why we believe this board will add great value and benefit to the industry. We've heard from Senator Brown that CropLife don't particularly want the board. One of the things that you will be pleased to see demonstrated is that the application, introduction and establishment of this board under the conditions and the structure that we're proposing here will actually end up providing net benefit to industry, because the purpose of the board is to make the APVMA more effective and efficient. That necessarily translates out quite directly. It will mean the costs to the APVMA will be reduced, and the beneficiary of reduced costs of application, reduced costs for the registration of chemicals and streamlining of the regulation of chemicals will be the industry sector. The fact that we are changing the processes to make them easier, more effective, less cumbersome, not so burdensome—all of these things—will add up to making the cost of regulation and registration of chemicals cheaper, and the beneficiary of cheaper regulation and registration will be the industry sector. So we believe that the establishment of a skills based, experience based board will assist the APVMA in implementing its new business model. It is a business model that we are absolutely determined will be the most efficient and effective regulator based in regional Australia—there we go, regionalisation—that will be able to deliver maximum efficiency and benefit to our industry sectors.

We've also worked closely with industry in developing the model for this board. The board, as it is proposed in this legislation, is also consistent with the findings of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources inquiry into the APVMA regulatory reforms, which supports the government's plan to establish an APVMA board. This is but one area where we believe that we can make a substantial difference to the efficiency and effectiveness of the operation of the APVMA and, in doing so, provide broad benefits across our whole community for people who require access to the regulatory activities of the APVMA.

It's worth noting that we are investing significant money in information and communications technology within APVMA to make sure that it has the ICT capacity to be able to respond quickly and effectively as an authority and as a regulator. It's tremendously important in this day and age that we are able to collect, collate, evaluate, use and implement the massive amount of information that is delivered to bodies such as this regulator to make sure that we are getting the best possible outcome. As we rightly know, there is much change in this area: new chemicals come onto the market, more information becomes available about old chemicals, or they become obsolete because chemical companies are no longer manufacturing them. This is a very dynamic environment in which the APVMA is required to operate. The consequences of us not having an effective and efficient organisation which is able to respond quickly to changes in the marketplace can have massive detrimental impacts, particularly on our agricultural sector. So the investment of over $10 million to modernise the APVMA's ICT systems will deliver huge benefits to the regulatory services available to the Australian industry sectors that rely on these services.

Prior to the election, I have to say that, under Labor, the proportion of applications finalised on time was but 33 per cent. I pointed to that because it does demonstrate that there was definitely a need for us to undertake the kind of reforms that are proposed in this bill. We have done it in a systematic and strategic way. We've undertaken wide consultation. We have listened to the interests and the concerns of the people who are impacted and the various stakeholders in this industry.

It's very pleasing to say that as of November 2018, the latest performance statistics of the APVMA show that it has significantly improved. There is obviously still room for further improvement, but it has significantly improved its performance for the fifth consecutive quarter, with 86 per cent of applications finalised within the legislative frameworks. So I would ask the chamber today to put politics aside, because this is a very, very important piece of legislation that affects every one of us and our everyday lives. I think support for this bill is absolutely essential for all of us.