Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk today about the issue that we have seen happen in imported berries. Australians are quite rightly concerned about the recent contamination outbreak of hepatitis A in imported frozen berries. As senators, as legislators, it is our job to respond to emerging challenges, like this outbreak, to prevent future contaminations and risk to the health of Australians.

Many see the solution to this problem as being related to a country-of-origin labelling system. By informing people of where their food comes from, it is argued, they can make an informed decision about the risks associated with eating imported products. Such a system is worthy of attention, but for it to have a meaningful impact on our decision to eat Australian grown and made food we need to know that that food is safe. This government's decision to defund the National Produce Monitoring Program has left any country-of-origin laws completely ineffective.

A concerted approach is required that incorporates testing of imported goods, country-of-origin labelling, and a domestic clean, green approach. You need a continuum from imports to domestic produce to make sure that we have a proper process and system in place. The concept of national produce monitoring program dates back almost a decade.

Nine years ago, the Council of Australian Governments identified chemicals used in Australian agriculture as part of a hotspot in the National Reform Agenda and established a ministerial taskforce to drive reform. Two years later, the Productivity Commission report Chemicals and plastics regulation found that the sector lacked national consistency in how it was regulated and that it could benefit from a national governance framework. The report made 30 recommendations for reform and informed the ministerial taskforce on chemicals and plastics regulation that was established in 2008. These reforms included: measures to limit the maximum chemical residue that can be found on food; regulating the use of chemicals on dairy farms; restricting access to high-risk agricultural and veterinary chemicals; and nationally harmonising poison scheduling to make it consistent across states. The COAG Primary Industries Ministerial Council developed a proposal for a single, national framework to improve the effectiveness of the regulation of agricultural and veterinary chemicals.

This council later merged into the Standing Council on Primary Industries, or SCoPI. In October of 2012, SCoPI announced that a number of elements would be harmonised, including minimum licensing and competency requirements for agricultural and veterinary chemicals users, and minimum access to chemicals provisions and veterinary prescribing and compounding rights. As part of the arrangements, the Australian government would fund a five-year nationally coordinated produce monitoring program.

In May 2013 the regulatory model was approved. The model contained a harmonised, enhanced national monitoring and trace-back program for chemical residues in produce. This model would provide a nationally consistent base level of produce monitoring to maintain confidence in the agvet chemical system, and to appropriately identify risks and respond to adverse events. Produce monitoring would also provide the evidence necessary to evaluate the proposed access to chemicals arrangements and assist in providing vital data to inform future reforms. The proposed model would link directly with existing compliance and enforcement processes in the jurisdictions and build on existing industry and government-run schemes.

A five-year pilot of the National Produce Monitoring Program was announced by the Gillard Labor government in the 2013-14 budget, with $25.4 million over five years. Funding was provided under the sustainable agriculture stream of the Caring for Our Country program, which meant that the expenditure for the pilot program was already included in the forward estimates. The regulatory impact statement stated that the bill would provide a benefit-cost ratio of 2.9 and a net benefit of $66.21 billion over 10 years. It would also help to negate negative environmental and trade impacts caused by chemical use. The unseen environmental impacts are rarely taken into account by those opposite and they are quite happy, it seems, to pass these costs on to future generations. The program was a success by health and safety standards, and it was also an economic success.

Mr Mark Tucker, the then Deputy Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry spoke about the program in the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee:

When we are looking at essentially reforming and having a nationally consistent approach to the use of agvet chemicals in Australia there was a large argument between a number of jurisdictions about how to treat off label and minor use of chemicals. I think it is fair to say there are diametrically opposed views between jurisdictions on how they are handled in their own jurisdictions, and we could not reach agreement across jurisdictions on how to have a national scheme.

He went on to say:

When we looked into that in some detail, we found there was basically no reliable data that could determine whether or not one regulatory approach would be more successful than another. So it flowed through a process of negotiation and discussion with our state and territory colleagues. It was agreed that we needed to do a national produce monitoring system.

He also added:

We will set up a national system over the next four years based on risk and priority to do actual testing. As part of that we will be talking to a number of people who already do some of that for their own purposes.

He went on to explain that of course there are a range of companies, supermarkets such as Coles and Woolworths, that do their own testing to ensure that produce is clean and green. He then ended that discourse with:

We will enter into a bit of a discussion about them and on what basis we may be able to get access to that data so we can establish a firm basis of essentially what sorts of levels of residue there may be on our produce going to market.

Despite all of the environmental, economic and health benefits that would come about with a national produce monitoring program, it was defunded by the Abbott government in the 2014-15 budget. The federal Department of Agriculture have refused to release sampling results from the one year that the pilot program ran. You do wonder what they have to hide. This is of course of great concern given that a random test for the current system in Western Australia last year revealed six violations of pesticide limits found in 80 samples of apricots and peaches.

This government is determined to focus its efforts purely on imports while cutting safeguards on domestic produce, and it is not good enough. We need a seamless web. This proposal will not protect Australians. I believe we need to remain vigilant on the safety of our domestic produce and maintain our world-class standards. These standards are valued and are vital in placing a premium on our products. People around the world know that our exports are safe, they are clean and they are green. Removing these safeguards and not ensuring that there is a system in place to guarantee these safeguards was, and still remains, a very hasty reaction by government with no foresight into the future of our regional economy. The government was very short-sighted in removing produce monitoring, because the states and territories wanted to ensure that they had a nationally consistent model in place. This government abandoned this monitoring, defunded it and left it to the states and territories to continue their own ad hoc system. This is quite a disappointment when the fruit and vegetables we export across the globe are renowned for their quality, whether they be out of Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland or any of the other states. We have one of the best systems in place to ensure that our produce hits overseas markets in a clean and green way. We need to ensure domestically that we have produce monitoring in place to give us the base level data that can assure us that our systems and our mechanisms remain the best in the world.