Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

No, I still have the call! I have five minutes on the clock, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I thank the minister for his answer. He just told the House of Representatives of the Australian parliament that the relocation of the APVMA is going to create jobs outside Armidale. I will now ask him, when he next gets to his feet, to expand on that. How is it that the relocation of a regulatory agency to Armidale—an agency which does not interface with farmers but an agency which interfaces with the chemical companies, is going to create benefits for Australian agriculture—remembering that those farm chemicals and veterinary medicines are critical to productivity in our—

Government members interjecting—

Listen to the ignorance of these people on the other side! This agency approves crop protection, for example. It approves veterinary medicines—the things that are critical to agricultural productivity. It interfaces with the big multinational chemical companies which come here to Canberra hoping to have their new products registered, approved or re-approved in a timely manner. Already they have difficulty doing so, largely because of under-resourcing at the APVMA and workforce issues. When that workforce walks away from the APVMA—when those very highly-trained professionals walk away because they have their children in schools in Canberra, rather than go to Armidale—that workforce will be destroyed, and the minister knows it.

Only this week I spoke to a proponent of a chemical to do with rodents on farms, who wants his organic chemical approved. Usually, that is a 10-week process. He has been told he will have to wait until April, Minister, because your workforce is already in decline. So the minister says that the relocation of this regulatory authority from Canberra to Armidale is going to create jobs in the agriculture sector. To save time, I will sit down and simply ask him again: where are those jobs in the agriculture sector? How is this relocation going to benefit the agriculture sector? Are you going to have approvals more quickly as a result of this move to Armidale?

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