Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Export Legislation Amendment Bill 2014 and the associated bills. This bill is pretty straightforward. It will address an anomaly which sees export inspection and registration processes taking place across a wide range of goods. But it is part of a user-pays system. Only some of the users are paying for the service at the moment. There are 676 establishments who are registered exporters of grains, fruit and vegetables. However, there are 269 who have not, until now at least, paid these fees. They are exporting things like cut flowers, dried fruit, fodder, nursery stock, nuts, seeds, timber products and tissue culture. They are not paying now, as I said. Undoubtedly they will not love the fact that they will have the opportunity to pay in the near future. But it is a bit like the budget. There are things that you know are right, and sometimes we have to do what is right. So I am sure those businesses that are currently exporting without paying these fees will cope.

Much is said about the exponential growth in demand for food worldwide and what Australia's place might be in that. Much is said about the people in the quickly expanding middle classes of the nations to our north who will undoubtedly, unfortunately, probably like Australians, learn to eat more. But importantly, as far as Australia sits, they will have a vastly changed diet. They will be looking for higher protein diets, a higher basis of manufactured good, and very clean, green products, because they are a very discerning population.

Australia has a great opportunity in this area. I gave a speech to this chamber last night that touched on some of those opportunities. One is our proximity to the markets. If we cannot get our food fresh, safely and economically into Asia then you have to ask yourself who can. There is also this great opportunity for Australian producers to actually change the make-up of the products that we try and sell into Asian markets. That might mean through the manufacturing process, but it also might mean through value-adding some of the products that we grow here already. Australia have a very large and efficient grain industry, and we export most of that grain as a bulk dry commodity, with very little value-add as it leaves the shores. I perceive a great opportunity for Australia in livestock, in the provision of meat protein into Asia. I think as their diets change and people have more income they will be looking for a heavier input of protein, much as Western nations have done.

This is a great opportunity for Australia because we can produce livestock here that will have the clean, green image and that will be taken quickly from the abattoirs into the markets, quite possibly as fresh product as well as frozen. Of course, there is also the opportunity for live export. This potential expansion will be a very big value-add for Australia. But we cannot underestimate how sensitive these Asian markets are, particularly the high-price markets, to being clean, green and having a reliable product.

In 2012, I was fortunate enough to be part of a bilateral parliamentary delegation to China. We visited Beijing; Kunming in the Yunnan province, in the fast-growing south-west of China; and also Shenzhen, in the Guangdong Province. It was an enlightening trip, especially to the south where we visited a number of Australian businesses with a significant and expanding foothold in China, businesses such as ANZ Bank's China's back office and an export cut-flower industry being facilitated by Australia's largest fresh cut flower wholesalers, the Lynch Group.

It was in Kunming that we met a young woman, who, with her mother owned three department stores. She was very keen on being able to get Australian products into her shop. I do not think we in Australia understand the shock in China of the 2008 melamine milk scandal. This is now etched deep in Chinese minds and those people who can afford it are looking for a safe product. This woman said to me, 'I eat Australian food; I provide Australian food for my family whenever I can, at every opportunity.'

At this stage I would like to congratulate the Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb. He has had fantastic success in forging bilateral trade agreements with Korea and Japan just this year. We are very hopeful—and he is very hopeful—that a deal is getting very close with China. There are some people in the Australian public who are distrustful of trade deals; they should not be. Every opportunity opens up more opportunities for Australian businesses. It must be remembered that Australia has very few trade barriers. We have quarantine laws, but they are driven by science, not by trade issues, as it should be. We have very few trade barriers, so we have very little to lose in forging these bilateral trade agreements. Most of these nations already have good access to our markets. What the bilateral trade agreements are about is getting better access to their markets. Of course, in some cases, it is not 100 per cent open. It is not a completely free trade deal. But any deal that improves the baseline situation we are in today is better than where we were yesterday.

I think it is interesting when we talk about free trade deals to reflect on the New Zealand experience. New Zealand has a free trade deal with China. It has led to a booming economy and a huge expansion in profits, particularly in the dairy industry. New Zealand has heavily promoted itself as a producer of clean, green, quality products and, in many cases, it has had the jump on Australia.

However, last year there was the first speed hump, the botulism scare with New Zealand milk. China immediately banned New Zealand milk powders. The businesses are now operating again, but there are still huge ramifications for what is seen as that failure by New Zealand. In fact, French food giant Danone is suing Fonterra for NZ$492 million. The brand and reputational damages that have been done in China are still not fully known, but there is no doubt that brand New Zealand has been damaged with this incident. It just shows how easy it is, with one incident, to lose that hard-won market respect.

We cannot underestimate that sensitivity. The melamine milk scandal in China I spoke about earlier has fuelled the skyrocketing demand for safe food. We understand that, while we suffer quite a large tariff disadvantage compared to New Zealand, I understand that Australian milk sales to China have lifted since the advent of the New Zealand problem. But expanded sales could not be expected if we were to have a quality problem.

I am Chair on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Industry. Currently, we are conducting an inquiry on country of origin food labelling. I was looking through some of the testimonies from our witnesses, including a recent one from AUSBUY, in Sydney. I have written to them and asked for further information. They said they had evidence that Australian business had been approached by Chinese interests to bring Chinese produce into Australia, to transform it in some way so it met our labelling standard of 'Made in Australia' and 'Made from local and imported produce'—not with the aim of putting it back on Australian shelves but with the aim of putting it back into China where they could trade on the good name that Australia has. I have asked them to provide further evidence of this. It needs to be more than hearsay. So I am looking forward to how they might come back and provide that evidence. But let me say: if this was happening, this would be one of the greatest threats to Australia's clean, green image overseas than one could possibly imagine—for example, if a product that was substandard or even, in some cases, contaminated and was marketed on Australian shelves, that would be very bad. But if it is marketed in a very sensitive market, such as China or Japan, under a label that says 'Australian made,' which would signify it was of a certain quality and it turned out not to be, the damage that could be done to our export markets in the future would be enormous. As I say, I do not have any better evidence than that at this stage, but I will certainly be following it with great interest.

I want a light touch on regulations. However, we must be able to guarantee Australia's quality and reliable and properly funded services with our inspection and registration schemes. Our very future depends on having an agency which can properly fulfil the functions that are set for it and that is what this legislation seeks to do. It seeks to equitably spread the load across the industry so that we have a well-funded agency. I would like to add my support to the comments of the member for Calare and I think the member for Hunter, who spoke against any suggestion that biosecurity should leave the Department of Agriculture and become part of a new border force, if you like. I would strongly resist it. I think this would be a bad move. The agency that looks after the reputation of Australia, our future biosecurity, must be stand-alone and fully focused on the issue at hand. We cannot run the risk of biosecurity becoming a second, third or fourth priority; it must remain a very high priority. In the end, some of the effects that I have spoken about today actually have great potential to damage Australia's future.

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