Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Innovation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Amendment Bill. It makes a number of changes that will ensure improvements to the collection and reporting of agricultural levies and charges to ensure better consistency between legislation and industry changes. It's the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources to collect, administer and disperse agricultural levies and charges to the 15 research and development corporations on behalf of the Australian agriculture, fisheries and forestry industries.

The changes made by this bill will ensure that all our RDCs are able to communicate effectively with their levy payers. Currently, only a few RDCs have the capacity to do so. However, Labor stresses that both the department of agriculture and our RDCs will have to responsibly use the data that will now be able to be collected and possibly shared with third parties, with written approval from the secretary.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank those opposite for their contribution on this debate. I can assure those opposite that the security and confidentiality of the information contained will be assured by very, very tight protections. It gives me an enormous amount of pleasure to commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.