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

I rise tonight to speak on two issues where the Abbott government wants to wind back progress. I know—you are shocked! The repeal of reforms of the last parliament is extremely disappointing. The first repeal is that of the chemicals re-registration scheme, which was a significant achievement that gave the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, the APVMA, the legislative triggers it needs to systematically review and quickly remove highly hazardous and unmanageable pesticides from the market if they fail to meet today's scientific standards.

The science of toxicology is undergoing a revolution, with the recognition of unintended impacts of pesticide exposure on our health and the environment. The role that environmental pesticide exposures might play in the development of certain cancers, Parkinson's disease and other metabolic disorders are currently the subject of a great deal of scientific scrutiny, and the science there is evolving every day.

Against this background of growing scientific knowledge, re-registration has been a long time coming. An enormous number of agricultural chemicals have never been properly assessed. These chemicals were grandfathered in the modern registration scheme. The APVMA has a poor track record with its chemical review program, with many high-risk pesticides under review for 10 to 15—that is 10 to 15 years where they continue to expose people to these potentially dangerous chemicals—without adequate action being taken to mitigate risks or indeed remove pesticides from use that are clearly just too dangerous. With the rewinding of these reforms, this is set to continue. A re-approval and re-registration scheme would ensure a systematic review of our ag-vet chemical inventory, many items of which have never been subject to contemporary risk assessment and are not considered safe by any modern measure yet persist in our community.

The global direction is to move away from highly hazardous pesticides towards safer ones, and Australia should not be left behind. Legislated risk-based re-registration schemes already operate in the USA, Canada and the European Union. The key focus of re-registration in these jurisdictions is to ensure older pesticides on the market are subjected to the same standards applied to the pesticides that we register today. Without a re-registration scheme, the APVMA has only an ad hoc approach to chemical review. There is no rationale in what ends up on the chemical review list and no guarantee that regulatory effort will be focused in on the pesticides of greatest risk. DAFF's initial assessment was that there are around 42 substances that would not pass re-registration. Without this scheme, those chemicals will continue to be available for sale in Australia, potentially for decades to come. Leaving the APVMA without a systematic mechanism to bring products back before it for assessment is asking them to regulate with one hand tied behind their backs.

Another area where the government is winding back reforms that were made in the Senate in the last parliament is the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission. This is a new body, which has the ability to substantially improve the way that charities and charitable donations in this country are managed, but it too is under threat of repeal, after a substantial amount of consultation and discussion went into putting it there in the first place. I notice Acting Deputy President Stephens nodding. She was very involved in this process and did a great deal of work to get this regulator in place.

This not-for-profit sector reform was the end result, as I said, of a lot of consultation and a lot of hard work from people across the sector and the various groups in the sector who were committed to seeing the principles of a vibrant, diverse and independent civil society underpinned by a legislative approach. Establishing the ACNC was a significant step towards the modernisation needed to ensure organisations are better equipped to operate in the 21st century. The commission and its associated legislation are supported by the large majority of the sector. About 80 per cent of the submissions to the recent Senate inquiry favoured the retention of the ACNC, and about 10 per cent expressed support for the principles underpinning its establishment but were agnostic on the question of whether the ACNC or some new entity carries out the regulatory function. Only 10 per cent advocated for its abolition.

Like any new body, the ACNC has been settling into its role and has not always struck the right balance between its regulatory functions and its red-tape reduction functions. But this is not a good excuse or reason to repeal the ACNC legislation—I dare say that, if we did that to every new body that was established, we would be winding up all these bodies within six to 12 months—rather it highlights that it is important that government works with the sector to improve the ACNC, rather than taking the backward step of destroying it.

The Greens supported the creation of the ACNC because it is important to our community to have a vibrant charity and not-for-profit sector that delivers a range of important services to hundreds of thousands of people—to the environment, to arts bodies, to sports bodies—and that leads the debate on important issues such as inequality and poverty. We must bear in mind that many of the charities that are working on emergency relief and supporting the most vulnerable are going to have a hell of a lot more of a load in the not-too-distant future if the budget measures go through this place. Community and charity organisations work hard to serve, defend and promote the broader needs of our community, and they need to remain strong and independent to do their best work. The not-for-profit sector is on the front line when it comes to dealing with the impacts of social policies such as the cuts to income support in the recent budget.

Above all else, the Greens are committed to a sector that is strong, enduring and independent and has the right of advocacy. Promoting a vibrant, diverse and independent sector is one of the three objectives of the ACNC, and the Greens are deeply concerned that this principle will not be carried forward into any alternative bodies proposed by the government. Unfortunately, it is still not possible to assess exactly how the repeal will affect the sector, because the government has released no detail about the ACNC's proposed replacement. When I asked the department about that, they could not tell me what the replacement body was going to be. This is concerning in itself, because repealing the dedicated regulator without having undertaken appropriate consultation—or in fact any, because there is a big cloud over that consultation process—or developed a clear alternative demonstrates an inherent lack of respect for the broad role that charities and not-for-profit organisations play in our community.

The inquiry that was carried out into the proposed repeal legislation confirmed that the Minister for Social Services, Mr Kevin Andrews, had undertaken 'informal consultations' about the process of repealing the ACNC and the possible form its replacement might take. However, an informal consultation process is highly subjective and often fails to properly account for and resolve differences of opinion among stakeholders. It is very easy to consult the people that you know you are going to get the answer that you want from. Before any decision on the ACNC's future was made, the government should have undertaken a full and proper, open process of consultation that reached out across the sector and encouraged their extensive involvement. The government also should have listened when organisations told them, overwhelmingly, that they did not want this body rejected, as the organisations that submitted to the inquiry said. The consultation process should have included the opportunity for providers to prepare and lodge submissions and for hearings and consultations to be undertaken around the country. There is clearly overwhelming support in the sector for an independent regulator and rejection of the Australian Taxation Office becoming the regulator again, which is highly likely. For these reasons, the Australian Greens do not support the backward step of getting rid of the ACNC powers. We do not support any of those going back to the ATO. This is simply no way to prove greater transparency and to streamline regulation.

In conclusion, I remain deeply concerned about these reforms and urge the government to reject these repeals because they are not reforms; they are backward steps.