David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party, Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank members for their contribution to the debate on the Industrial Chemicals Bill 2017 and the other five associated bills—the Industrial Chemicals (Notification and Assessment) Amendment Bill 2017, the Industrial Chemicals (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2017, the Industrial Chemical Charges (General) Bill 2017, the Industrial Chemical Charges (Excise) Bill 2017, and the Industrial Chemicals Charges (Customs) Bill 2017.

These six bills realise a longstanding acknowledgement, spanning several governments, that reform to the regulation of industrial chemicals was required. The bills create a new regulatory scheme in Australia, to be known as the Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme. The reformed scheme was developed through many years of consultation with the stakeholders, and I thank them for their dedication and the time involved in this process. I'm confident that the new regulatory scheme strikes the right balance between benefitting the community as well as businesses.

This scheme will maintain Australia's high standard of human and environmental protection while seeing regulatory efforts made more proportionate to the risk. This means that the regulator will be able to focus its regulatory efforts on assessing the higher-risk chemicals where the greatest regulatory oversight is needed. By ensuring that this regulatory effort is proportionate to risk, we are removing unnecessary barriers to the introduction of very low risk chemicals in an effort to promote safer innovation. This should have the effect of encouraging these cleaner, greener chemicals while continuing to protect the Australian people and environment from any harmful effects from industrial chemicals.

The member for Makin has raised concerns around the use of the exempt category. These concerns are misplaced. The subjectivity he's objecting to is what exists now under the current NICNAS. Under the current regime, 97 per cent of chemicals are being introduced under an exemption category where the introducer determines that there is no unreasonable risk. The new scheme actually sets clearer, more objective criteria to ensure that the continuing protection of human health and the environment is paramount. The exempted category will contain only chemicals that are considered very low risk, including polymers of low concern, and chemicals introduced for the purposes of research and development, provided that their introduction meets the definition of R&D and some volumetric thresholds are met.

We have also heard calls for increased reporting for chemicals in the exempt category. It is not the reporting of these chemicals that will protect health and the environment but the new strengthened evaluation framework that we are introducing. This allows the regulator to respond quickly and initiate evaluations as soon as concerns about a chemical arise. This includes new, stronger powers to gather information. We're also strengthening the regulator's power to place conditions on certain chemicals, including new powers to refuse entry into the Australian market in certain circumstances and powers to remove chemicals that are already being used.

I should also emphasise that there are clear obligations on introducers to keep records of the information they have used to demonstrate their category of introduction, and the regulator will be able to audit these records and take appropriate and proportionate actions to ensure continued compliance by all introducers across all categories of introduction, including the lowest-risk categories. These strengthened monitoring and compliance powers, consistent with those used by other regulators, will ensure continued protections for the Australian people. This will ensure that workers, the public and the environment remain protected from any potential harmful effects of industrial chemicals.

Another concern that was raised was that the Industrial Chemicals Bill does not include any reference to continuing the Inventory Multi-tiered Assessment and Prioritisation framework, known as IMAP. IMAP was developed as a practical way to accelerate the review of over 30,000 unassessed chemicals that have been on a public list, known as the national inventory, since the NICNAS arrangements commenced in 1989. The excessively prescriptive evaluation process in the existing law had resulted in very few evaluations of these chemicals being completed. IMAP is widely considered to be an example of a very successful collaboration between government, industry and non-industry stakeholders, and has resulted in over 7,500 chemicals being assessed since 2012. I'd like to assure the Australian community that we will continue to prioritise these chemicals for systematic evaluation. So we are building on the success of IMAP with a new, more flexible and responsive framework in the Industrial Chemicals Bill that gives the regulator the flexibility needed to tailor an evaluation to address an issue or a chemical of concern. This framework will allow us to more effectively evaluate industrial chemicals in commerce in Australia and will lead to clear regulatory outcomes, which could include the removal of a chemical from use. This, I note, cannot be done through the current IMAP process or the current act. We will use this framework to continue to assess those unassessed chemicals on the national inventory.

The reforms also provide greater transparency for both industry and the public, with each assessment and evaluation undertaken by the regulator from 1 July 2018 being published on the regulator's website, providing all stakeholders with important risk and safety information. Every new listing on the inventory will be linked to its assessment statement, outlining any measures recommended to mitigate known risks. We will also track and report on the status of actions taken by the national and jurisdictional risk managers in relation to any risk management recommendations made by the regulator. This reporting will provide timely access to information, which will be of greater benefit to industry and the community. For business, the risk based approach to regulation will remove unnecessary regulatory burden and, along with improved IT systems, will provide the opportunity for industry to self-categorise lower risk chemicals against—and I state this—criteria that we, the regulator, establish. This will reduce costs for business and ultimately for consumers. It will also remove the barriers to introduction of cleaner and greener chemicals which would benefit the Australian community and environment. Higher risk chemicals will continue to be assessed by the regulator before they can enter commerce in Australia.

Many Australians have expressed concerns about the welfare of animals and have called for a ban, like that seen internationally, on the use of animals when establishing the safety of cosmetics. At the same time, there is an international trend away from using animal testing for chemical research, including for ethical reasons. Developments in technology are enabling a reduction in reliance on animal testing as, for example, computer modelling becomes more sophisticated and reliable. As a result, very few industrial chemical introductions rely on animal test data to support assessments of risks to human health and safety or the environment. For this reason, the scheme established by this bill is specifically designed to not rely on animal test data except as a very last resort, where it's absolutely necessary to protect human health and the environment.

I am pleased to say that these important pieces of legislation include the government's commitment to introduce a ban on the use of animal testing for cosmetics. As in Europe, the new scheme recognises that we must continue to protect Australian workers. Also as in Europe, the new scheme allows the limited use of data from animal tests for chemicals that have other industrial uses in addition to use in cosmetics. Since the bill was introduced, there have been some calls to extend the scope of the ban—to include chemicals with other industrial uses in addition to a cosmetic use.

Amendments introduced by the opposition today promise to close some perceived loophole. But the amendments actually create loopholes. This is because they were written by people who have not sought to understand how the Australian regulatory system works.

We have spoken to key animal justice organisations that are keen to be part of creating Australia's ban on the use of new animal test data to support the introduction of chemicals used as cosmetic ingredients. I thank all of them for working with us to get the best outcomes for animal welfare.

The proposal from the opposition is not consistent with the regulatory framework in Europe and would place Australian industry at a disadvantage. Animal test data that are permitted for use in Europe for assessing multi-use chemicals could not be used here, even if the data showed risks to worker health and safety. This is not a regulatory arrangement that the government could support. Those proposed amendments will not result in an improvement in animal welfare outcomes and would likely result in some chemicals being considered of lower risk than would otherwise have been determined, which places human and environmental health at risk. Members may be interested to know that we received written confirmation just today from the European Chemicals Agency that Australia's proposed ban is consistent with that of the European Union.

Industrial chemicals form a multibillion dollar international market in which Australia is both an importer and an exporter. This new scheme provides alignment with the schemes of Australia's trading partners, and greater acceptance of assessments made by comparable international regulators. This will support Australian industry to become more competitive internationally, providing not only jobs, which everyone wants, but safe jobs for Australian workers. The new scheme is a proportionate approach to the regulation of industrial chemicals that will promote innovation in Australia and incentivise the introduction of safer chemicals into Australia.

The member for Makin referenced the huge number of jobs in Australia linked to the industrial chemicals sector. We have heard from key industry players that those jobs are at risk if Australia doesn't reduce the burden placed on the sector by our outdated regulation. This is apparent when we consider that other Western nations with markets far larger than Australia's are miles ahead of us in how they treat very low risk chemicals. The Australian community can be confident that Australia's high standard of protection of health and safety for people and the environment will be maintained in this new regulatory scheme. Thank you.

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