Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Cities and Regional Development (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

I would never ever say that you know, Deputy Acting President, because you've been just as frustrated as me on the committee at times through Senate estimates. I'm dying to hear the answer. I'm really looking forward to it. What will $600,000 buy? What will be the job of the board of governance apart from going to Armidale—are they going to go to Armidale to meet? Is that what they're going to do? Or is the $600,000 to fly the relocated staff or leaders from APVMA—who we haven't found yet or we may have found—to the Gold Coast or something? I don't have a clue. I'm really looking forward to finding out what that is all about.

It just keeps falling into place. I've been around this committee for 13½ years. We've had some magnificent inquiries. We've had some magnificent outcomes and some good policy. I'm blessed to be the chair of the reference committee and, previously, when in government, the legislation committee. I'm blessed to have dead-set, fair-dinkum senators, who park the political bulldust aside. As you know, Mr Acting Deputy President, on every inquiry the first thing we do is look at what is in the best interest of Australia's farming community, what is in the best interest of Australia's food producers and what is in the best interest of our nation, whether it be biosecurity, access to trade and markets or whatever.

Nearly all the senators that I have sat on that committee with—there's been the odd one who thinks they're going to reinvent the wheel—actually agree with me. Some of the members of the committee have gone off and become parliamentary secretaries, shadow ministers, ministers and all sorts of stuff. No-one could ever say that we will run a political argument and use agriculture as our football. We don't do that. We absolutely make sure that, when we come out and have the reports, the majority of the time they are agreed to by the committee. We all tick off. Whether it's under my chairmanship, Senator O'Sullivan's chairmanship or former Senator Bill Heffernan's chairmanship, we've always said, 'If there are some differences, how can we come to an arrangement where we can all agree,' because we just think it's in the best interests of the committee and the communities that we serve. And most of the time we do that. There are some times when there are things that we just cannot agree on, but what we do is we say, 'Let's have some additional comments.' For those who aren't quite sure, additional comments are: 'We agree with the basis of the report, but we want to add something in that we think is important, even though you might have a different view.' And we do that. Now and again we'll have a dissenting report, which is very rarely, but they do happen.

This brings me back to the complexity of this shameless pork-barrelling by the minister. To make things even murkier, last year it came across our radar—I'm just trying to remember, because there's been a lot of excitement in the rural, regional affairs and transport committee—that the government was trying to find a site in Armidale. I'm happy to be corrected if my memory is a bit hazy, but I remember there was this site found and I realised that it wasn't quite big enough and that it needed to be a bit bigger. Then there was another site. They were both on different streets, but I think their back doors bumped into each other—something like that. In the middle was a little obstacle—I think it was a tavern. Was it a tavern? What was it? There was something in the middle, anyway—a building—and the government went out and said, 'We need a building'—