Gabriel Ng (Menzies, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise again today to speak on the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. Like a lot of Australians, I like a glass of wine at the end of a long day or sharing a bottle with friends over dinner. It's part of our culture. We bring a bottle to a house warming. We gift it on birthdays or special occasions. But Australia hasn't always been a wine drinking country. Around Federation, the Australian official yearbook stated 'Australians are not a wine drinking people.' That changed in the postwar period, when a new generation arrived—a generation of European migrants. It is another example of how multiculturalism has enriched and benefited our nation.

In 1965, our newfound love of wine and the Australian spirit of innovation combined to create our own globally significant invention: the wine cask. It keeps wine fresher for longer. It's a staple of many pantries and kitchen benches for when you don't want to commit to a whole bottle of wine, but you just want a quiet glass or two. Wine has become such a part of life in this country that we don't always stop to think about where it comes from: the hardworking grape growers who spend months worrying about frost, if rain is going to fall at exactly the wrong time or a market that might not pay a fair price when the harvest finally comes in. This bill is about getting a fairer deal for them.

For too long, many growers have carried the weather, the water, the years it takes for a vine to mature and the debt that comes with all of it or having almost no say in the price they are ultimately paid or when they are paid it. Growers have described turning up to sell a season's harvest without knowing the price until the truck is already loaded. There were payment terms that stretched out over months, sometimes almost a year, while their own bills were due and continued to pile up, and a voluntary code of conduct that was fair on paper but meant almost nothing in practice because nobody was required to follow it and nobody could enforce it if they didn't. That is not a fair go. That is not the kind of marketplace Australians expect us to build. We are a government that wants businesses to thrive and wants our primary producers to be fairly compensated for the hard work they do and the risks they take to produce great Australian wines. This bill is about levelling the playing field, about providing the same basic protections we would expect for anyone dealing with a much larger, more powerful buyer.

In August 2024, the government asked Dr Craig Emerson to test whether the market was genuinely failing growers and to look closely at contracting practices and how risk is shared across the supply chain. His review, delivered in mid-2025, made 14 recommendations. It found what growers had been saying for years: that small growers hold too little bargaining power against large winemakers and a concentrated retail sector and that the existing voluntary code simply cannot be enforced. His central recommendation was to replace that voluntary code with a mandatory code, enforceable by the ACCC, applying to large winemakers in their dealings with growers. The government accepted that recommendation in December 2025 and has since been developing the code with an advisory group, bringing growers and winemakers to the same table—maybe over a glass of wine.

This bill is the groundwork that the code needs to function. It confirms Wine Australia's role running industry surveys, building on the longstanding National Vintage Survey, and allows that information to be shared with the ACCC, which would otherwise struggle to identify which businesses the code applies to. The bill also lets the government's independent agricultural research bureau pass on survey contact details to a mailing provider, solely to send out survey letters, lift response rates and improve the data this sector relies on. Put simply, this bill does not write new rules for the wine industry; it builds the infrastructure for the rules to work, giving the ACCC the information it needs and giving growers the data they need to know whether they are getting a fair price.

My electorate of Menzies is not typically thought of as a grape-growing electorate, but we do have our winemakers. Last year I had the pleasure of visiting Rebecca and Adrian at Santolin Wines in Warrandyte South. They were kind enough to walk me through their business, and it was clear how much passion and hard work goes into every bottle they produce. They told me how they had both worked in the wine industry for much of their working lives, and they took the risk of stepping out on their own, starting out with just a single barrel. They bet on themselves, and their hard work paid off. They received armloads of awards for their wines, which allowed them to grow and eventually expand their facility into the one they're in now in Warrandyte South. They walked me through some of the challenges that they have faced, showing how they managed to make their business work despite these challenges.

They took the time to walk me through the three stages of making a bottle of wine. First, of course, comes the harvest, picking the grapes at exactly the right moment, because picking too early or too late means the whole batch can be affected. Then comes fermentation, where the grapes are crushed and the sugar in the juice is slowly turned into alcohol. Finally, there is the ageing and bottling, where the wine is left to develop its character before it is ready for someone's dinner table. Each of the three stages demands patience, skill and a fair bit of risk.

Winemakers were also consulted on this bill and will also benefit from the clearer market information and the mandatory code. Of course, the wine industry benefits people across our community in a whole range of ways. When growers are paid fairly and the sector is sustainable, that flows through to the businesses on our high streets that depend on a reliable, well-priced local product.

My community may not grow the grapes—that's nearby in the Yarra Valley and further beyond—but we are part of the reason there is a market for what the growers produce, and we have a stake in making sure that market is a fair one. Wine, of course, is served in the fantastic pubs and clubs in my community, like the Sporting Globe Bar & Grill at Shoppingtown, Shoppingtown Hotel, the Blackburn Hotel, Cherry Hill Hotel, Templestowe Hotel and many others. I'd like to congratulate the Grand Hotel Warrandyte, who recently won not one but two awards in the 2026 Australian Hotels Association Victoria awards. They won the Heart of the Community award and the best overall hotel of the year award for the metropolitan area. As these accolades show, they are absolutely at the heart of the community in Warrandyte. Locals go there to watch the footy or the World Cup, for birthdays, for New Year's Eve or to catch up with friends and family. They've got a fantastic restaurant—I can testify to the quality of their parmas—and they even partner up with local suppliers like Warrandyte Quality Meats to host their popular meat tray raffle for our local champions the Warrandyte Pink Ladies, who have raised so much money for cancer around our community. Alongside these raffles, the hotel runs charity drives, live auctions and community dinners and donates the proceeds from the monthly menu features, such as 'parma of the month' and 'cocktail of the month', to very worthy causes.

Wine sits at the table of the many restaurants my community fills every weekend, from Bulleen to Templestowe and from Surrey Hills to Box Hill. It sits on the shelves of local bottle shops and it sits at the centre of the festivals that define who we are, from Lunar New Year celebrations to the countless community dinners that bring people from every corner of Menzies together.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

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Wine is also served in our great local restaurants in Menzies, like the Doncaster Greek Tavern in Jackson Court. I was at the Doncaster Greek Tavern last Friday night with the Jackson Court Traders Association, who were holding their regular networking dinner. It was clear what a great sense of community the traders association have created, with not just the owners and operators of the businesses but also their families and their children in attendance. I say thank you to Con, Diana and all the members of the traders association for bringing our community together and supporting each other's businesses to thrive and grow, creating jobs and servicing our local community.

Australia is also an exporting nation, and the quality and ingenuity of Australian winemakers has elevated our wines to be iconic, luxury brands that are known around the world, particularly in places like China. In our Chinese Australian community, Penfolds Grange is often given as a gift for special occasions or in gratitude. We as a government are supporting our local winemakers by keeping our export market strong and keeping our trade strong.

When they were last in government, those opposite mishandled our relationship with our largest trading partner. As a result, growers and winemakers found their largest export market suddenly closed to them after tariffs of up to 218 per cent were imposed on Australian wine in 2021. Growers, winemakers and their employees and communities paid the price for that. It was the Albanese Labor government that did the patient, methodical work of repairing that relationship, and, in March 2024, those tariffs came off. This was a huge relief for an industry already sitting on serious oversupply and falling global consumption. It is one thing to talk about backing regional Australia, and it is another to do the delicate work of rebuilding a relationship built on mutual respect and mutual benefit. This bill continues in that same spirit. It continues doing the important, practical work that actually changes the conditions on the ground for growers, rather than just talking about supporting them.

This bill sits within a much broader program of support. Since coming to office, the government has provided more than $90 million to the wine industry across trade, research, tourism and viability programs. The free trade agreement and the wine agreement finalised with the European Union in March remove tariffs of up to 32 euros per 100 litres and cut the certification costs that have made exporting harder than it should be, while protecting Australian winemakers' right to keep using terms like 'prosecco'.

None of these measures alone solve every challenge facing the wine sector, but they are addressing them. They represent a government that is showing up for an industry that has too often been left to fend for itself. This bill is the foundation of a fairer, more enforceable set of rules governing one of the country's great agricultural industries. It backs in growers. It backs in winemakers—like Rebecca and Adrian, from my community, and thousands like them across the country—who spent years being told to wait for a fair deal that never quite arrived. This bill makes sure we have fairness in the paddock and fairness at the negotiating table. I commend the bill to the House.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. Given that I represent the best wine region in Australia, it would be remiss of me not to speak. I want to acknowledge, Deputy Speaker Haines, that the King Valley in your community has some good wine areas as well—just not quite as good as the Yarra Valley's! We take pride in serving communities like the Menzies community. We play such key roles in our communities but also in serving Australia and the world. The coalition is supporting this bill. It's in response to the findings of the Emerson review, which found that grapegrowers face an imbalance in bargaining power against large winemakers and the voluntary code is no longer fit for purpose.

Victoria's wine industry was born in the Yarra Valley. Our wine industry began shortly after the first colonial farmers in 1837, when the Scottish-born Ryrie brothers established Yering Station, initially operating as a cattle farm. A year later, they planted the first grapevines on the property, marking the birth of Victoria's wine industry. That winery still operates today, but, in the current climate, there are many wine growers concerned about the future of their business. I've been engaging with these wine growers in many different forums and many different ways. I want to thank Wine Yarra Valley and Wine Australia for working with me in bringing together many roundtables with wineries large and small to make sure that we can hear about the challenges they are facing and do the work to help them grow into the future.

When we talk about wineries and the wine industry in my community and every other community that is lucky enough to have a wine region, it's not just about the wineries; there is a whole ecosystem of jobs and opportunities that is created off the back of these wineries. My own lived experience is of this. When I was at high school and, then, university, I worked for a local hospitality company called Prestige Events. We did weddings, marquee weddings, and we had partnerships with most of the greatest wineries in the Yarra Valley. Residents from the local area, from the city, from interstate and from overseas would come into the Yarra Valley to have their weddings at one of those wineries. That job not only provided me with an income but gave me so many life lessons. I'll always be grateful to Michael and Gayle Thwaites for the opportunity they gave to a 15-year-old who didn't really know what hard work was. They taught me very quickly what hard work was.

That's just one example of how the wine industry in the Yarra Valley and across the country is creating jobs, particularly for young people and particularly those at high school, giving them opportunities to learn about life and earn a little bit of extra money. I do say that one of the great things about working in weddings is that it is great preparation for politics, because there is no tougher customer alive than a bride. I learnt a lot. Because it is such a special day—

Let's be honest, Member for Lyne; as long as the groom turns up in a suit and fully shaven, they're pretty happy. But he talks about needing to set high standards, and the wineries of the Yarra Valley and of Australia set the highest standards in the world.

But our local wine growers and wine growers across Australia are facing continued uncertainty with challenging trade conditions, a global oversupply of wine and declining consumption in many markets. The sector is currently carrying around 262 million litres more wine than can be commercially sustained, placing enormous downward pressure on prices throughout the supply chain. The 2026 grape harvest was the smallest in 25 years, yet grape prices continue to decline. At the same time, global wine consumption has fallen to its lowest level in more than 60 years. Australia cannot solve those international market conditions, but we can ensure our domestic market is as fair and transparent as possible.

And we need to remember that, behind these numbers—yes, there are some large organisations. There are some large businesses and some people in the wine industry who are doing well. But, in many cases, there are families that are either generational winemakers or have decided to start a winery, and their winery is their future. It's their superannuation. It's how they plan to retire, and, hopefully, they will pass it on to their children. So it's not just about the wineries; it is about the families behind those wineries who are doing it so tough at the moment. None of these challenges are addressed in this bill.

But what the bill does address is Dr Emerson's independent review, which found significant issues of bargaining power between major buyers and smaller-scale grape purchasers. We have many small, family-run wineries in my community. They produce amazing wines, but this imbalance in bargaining power results in growers accepting contracts with unfavourable terms or limited ability to resolve disputes.

The coalition has a strong record of supporting mandatory codes where there is a clear imbalance in market power and where voluntary agreements are no longer delivering fair outcomes for suppliers. We've strengthened mandatory codes including the Dairy Code of Conduct, the Horticulture Code of Conduct and the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct to ensure fairness and confidence in supply chains. This fairness is important because it delivers better, cheaper products to markets today and into the future, making sure there's a diversity of suppliers and there are consumers on the other end. We back competitive markets, but we must ensure that our primary producers and our small operators are receiving a fair deal.

This bill also establishes an information-sharing framework with Wine Australia to share information with the ACCC for the implementation of the mandatory code. It further makes change to the levy collection system, but it does nothing to address the broader structural problems identified by the government's own Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission found that Australia's agricultural levy system has become a bureaucratic nightmare of around 248 levies administered through approximately 70 different arrangements, creating unnecessary complexity, increasing administrative burden and dragging on productivity. We should always remember when we talk about levies for agriculture, whether for wineries or farmers, that it is the farmers' money.

I was very lucky. My uncle Sam, who was a strawberry grower, was president of both the Victorian and the national strawberry growers associations at the same time for over a decade. I spoke to him. I have seen firsthand the work he's done as a farmer but also in his advocacy for the strawberry industry across our country. I remember, when I got elected, he took me aside, as all good Italian uncles do, and gave me a few words of wisdom and a lot of lessons.

Well, he gives them to me every time, member for Groom. But what he did say to me about farmers and about levies was really important. He said, 'Never forget that those levies that are collected and spent by bureaucrats and departments are the farmers' money.' It's their money that they are giving up to deliver a better outcome for their industry, and, if it's not delivering a better outcome for the industry, they shouldn't be paying the levy. Farmers are happy to pay levies because they understand the importance of the collective nature of putting that money together to grow their industry. That's why he was president of the strawberry growers association—to grow the strawberry industry across our country. But it must always be delivering value for money for our farmers, and getting rid of that complexity will help deliver value for money for our Australian farmers. And, if our Australian farmers are strong and growing, that's means we will have better prices and better products for consumers all across our country.

The reality for our local wine growers is they are facing issues beyond the code of conduct and levies that this bill addresses. Earlier this year, the wine industry put forward a practical and costed package of measures through its pre-budget submission to help growers and wine makers navigate these difficult and challenging market conditions. The government, unfortunately, failed to listen, didn't engage and did not act on those recommendations. As Darren Rathbone, the chief executive officer and wine maker at Yering Station, Victoria's oldest winery, said at the time:

Backing the industry through this federal budget is an investment in regional communities like ours.

But the government didn't back regional communities like mine. They turned their back on regional winemaking communities and continue to fail to provide meaningful support to the industry for the challenges that it is facing. Again, when we talk about industry, we are talking about people and their families, and many families have got everything invested in their winery. Instead, the government made it harder for wineries, particularly wineries like mine, which not only grow and make wine but rely on tourism for their businesses.

The government abolished the Wine Tourism and Cellar Door Grant program that helped wineries like those in the Yarra Valley to attract visitors, grow regional tourism and diversify their income. Not only did that cellar door grant program help the wineries; it helped sustain our local economy, because when the wineries invest in new cellar doors and upgrade their facilities, they get local builders and local suppliers to do the work. That is more economic growth taken away from communities like mine because of the heartless decisions of this government.

Wineries are the economic heart of communities like the Yarra Valley. They support local jobs, hospitality businesses and local tourism. When our wineries are strong, our local accommodation venues are strong, our tourism operators are strong, and our local shopping strips and small businesses are strong. A mandatory code will go some way towards evening the bargaining power between grape growers and wine makers, but it is only one part of the solution for our wine industry. We want to see Australia's wine industry thrive long into the future. For this to happen, the government must pair these reforms with practical support for growers, regional wineries and wine tourism and stop the cuts to successful programs that are helping our wineries grow. The coalition and I will keep standing up for regional wineries like ours in the Yarra Valley because our growers, our small businesses and our agricultural families are worth fighting for. They are the heartbeat of our economy. They give so much back to our communities.

I'm proud to come from a farming family. I'm proud to have grown up as a third-generation local in Casey and to have worked in hospitality businesses that thrived through a strong wine and grape growing industry. The industry has been great to me. I'll always continue to be a voice for our industry, because I know right now in our community young people are getting the opportunity to learn life lessons and earn some extra income through hospitality and through tourism. Not only are those young people learning and getting opportunities as teenagers at university like I did but many are seeing long-term opportunities to work in agriculture, in horticulture, in tourism and in hospitality not only in our community but also all across Melbourne. Many take the opportunity to go overseas and travel the world off the back of the hospitality experience that they gain.

It's so important that we continue to do the work to get it right and help this industry at this most challenging time that they are facing through no fault of their own. For every day I have the honour of being the member for Casey, I will work to support our industries, including our hospitality, our horticulture, our tourism and our wine regions.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that the member for Pearce would like to present a copy of their speech for incorporation into Hansard in accordance with the resolution agreed to on 6 November 2025.

Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

I would like to speak in support of the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. This is a practical and necessary bill that responds to real pressures in the wine sector and gives growers and winemakers a clearer, fairer framework in which to operate. It is a bill that recognises both the economic importance of the wine industry and the challenges it has faced in recent years, and it seeks to deal with those challenges in a measured and constructive way.

The wine industry is one of Australia's great success stories. Since coming to office, the Albanese Labor government has delivered over $90 million in funding to support the grape and wine sector. This acknowledges how critical this industry is to Australia. It contributes to regional economies, supports jobs across production, transport, hospitality and tourism and helps project Australia's reputation around the world for quality food and beverage products.

But, like many parts of agriculture, it is also an industry that operates under pressure. It is exposed to global market shifts, changing consumer preferences, climate variability, supply chain disruptions and, at times, a mismatch in bargaining power between growers and purchasers. When those pressures build up, they can put real strain on farm businesses, family enterprises and the communities that depend on them. That is why this bill matters. It is not simply a technical amendment bill. It is a bill about fairness, transparency and confidence. It is about ensuring that the rules of the market better reflect the realities that growers and winemakers face. It is about creating a stronger foundation for long-term investment and better decision-making. Most importantly, it is about giving the industry the tools it needs to build a more stable future.

A key part of the bill is the move toward a mandatory code of conduct for wine grape purchases. That is an important reform because the existing voluntary approach has not been enough to address the underlying problems in the market. Too often, growers have been left carrying the risk while having limited ability to influence the terms on which they sell their product. In any industry, that is not a sustainable arrangement. In an industry like the wine industry, where planting decisions, capital investment and harvest planning are made years in advance, it is particularly difficult when commercial arrangements are uncertain or opaque.

The bill seeks to improve those arrangements by giving growers and winemakers greater confidence and transparency. That is not just a slogan. It is a practical necessity. If a grower is making decisions about pruning, irrigation, labour, vineyard management and future plantings, they need to know more than just what the market might look like in a general sense. They need a clearer view of what buyers are likely to offer, what terms will apply and how those terms will be communicated. The reforms in this bill are designed to improve exactly that.

The bill also strengthens Wine Australia's ability to collect and use information through industry surveys. That may sound like a modest administrative change, but it is actually a very important one. Good policy depends on good information. If government and industry do not have accurate and timely data about what is happening in the market, they are flying blind. They cannot properly identify emerging risks, they cannot see where pressure is building and they cannot shape effective responses. Better information means better decisions. Better decisions mean better outcomes for growers, winemakers and the wider sector.

This reform also supports the administration and enforcement of the proposed mandatory code through the ACCC. That is important because a code is only meaningful if it can be properly implemented and enforced. Rules on paper do not help growers if they are not backed by real oversight. Nor do they help if there are no reliable mechanisms for monitoring compliance. This bill strengthens that architecture. It helps ensure that the code is not just a statement of principle, but a genuine practical tool that can improve behaviour across the supply chain.

One of the most significant aspects of the bill is the focus on transparency in grape pricing and contracting. The review underpinning these reforms recommended that winemakers make earlier, binding offers for each grape variety they seek under contract in certain key growing regions and that those offer prices be made public. That is a very important step. Transparency is one of the best ways to improve fairness in markets where power is unevenly distributed. When buyers must put forward clearer offers earlier, growers are placed in a stronger position to make informed decisions. They can compare options, plan ahead and avoid being left in the dark until the last moment.

That matters because grape growing is not an ordinary business. It is deeply tied to seasonal cycles, weather conditions, labour availability and long-term investment. A grower cannot simply switch production overnight if market conditions become difficult. A vineyard is a long-term commitment. It can take years before the benefits of planting, irrigation and management are fully realised. That is why certainty matters so much. It is also why fairness in the contracting process matters so much. If the rules are clearer and the process is more transparent, the entire sector stands to benefit.

The bill also includes changes relating to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, ABARES, and the Collections Act. These changes will allow ABARES to use and disclose personal information for its work, including agricultural research and analysis. That is another example of a reform that may appear technical but has broader significance. Strong agricultural data is essential for good public policy. We need to know what is happening across agriculture, fisheries and forestry if we are to respond effectively to changing conditions. That includes tracking production trends, understanding regional variation and assessing the impact of policy settings over time.

The bill does include safeguards, and rightly so. Any use of personal information should be handled carefully and consistently with privacy obligations, but the broad principle is sound. If we want a modern, responsive agricultural policy framework, then we need the data to match it. We need the capacity to analyse trends properly and to make evidence based decisions rather than rely on guesswork or outdated assumptions. That is especially important in a sector as complex and dynamic as agriculture.

The government has also indicated that it has provided substantial funding support for the grape and wine sector in recent years. That broader support is important context. It shows that this bill is not a standalone intervention but part of a wider effort to help the sector adjust and grow. The wine industry has faced tough conditions, and it is right that government has stepped in with reforms and assistance that aim to support resilience rather than simply manage decline. Industry needs a future focused policy approach, not just short-term fixes.

For regional communities, this matters even more. Wine is not only an export product or a line on a balance sheet. It is part of the social and economic fabric of many regions. It supports local employment, sustains small businesses, drives tourism and helps shape the identity of whole communities. In places where vineyards, cellar doors, hospitality venues and support services all depend on one another, a stronger wine industry supports a stronger regional economy. That is particularly relevant in Western Australia, where wine regions contribute not only to production but to the tourism and hospitality sectors as well. When the industry is stable, the benefits flow far beyond the vineyard gate.

That is why I welcome the bill's focus on rebuilding confidence across the supply chain. It recognises that the relationship between growers and buyers has not always been working as well as it should. It accepts that transparency and fairness are not optional extras; they are essential ingredients of a healthy market. And it shows a willingness to intervene where necessary to correct structural weaknesses rather than leaving individual growers to carry the burden alone. There is also a broader principle at stake here. Good legislation should do more than regulate. It should improve the conditions under which people can plan, invest and prosper. That is what this bill aims to do. It does not seek to overcomplicate the market or burden the industry with unnecessary red tape. Instead, it seeks to create clearer rules, better information and more balanced relationships. That is a sensible and responsible approach.

We should also acknowledge the consultation that has gone into these reforms. The bill has been developed after engagement with industry bodies, levied industries, research and development corporations and other recipients of levy and charge information. That is important because the best reforms are those that reflect real-world experience. Industry knows where the pain points are. Growers know where the system is not working. Winemakers understand the commercial pressures they face. Good government listens to that experience and turns it into workable policy. This bill reflects that approach.

At a time when many sectors are under pressure, the wine industry deserves policy that is clear, practical and grounded in reality. It deserves reforms that help restore trust, support investment and promote sustainability. That is what this bill attempts to do. It strengthens Wine Australia, supports ABARES, improves the regulatory framework for grape purchasing and gives the industry a better basis on which to plan for the future. In closing, this is a sensible bill and a welcome one. It recognises the value of the wine sector, the hard work of growers and winemakers and the importance of fair dealing in commercial relationships. It provides a stronger framework for transparency, better data and more accountable market behaviour. It is a bill that supports regional Australia, supports agricultural resilience and supports a more confident future for one of our most important export industries. For those reasons, I am proud to support the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026.

Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 as a local MP with a small but valuable wine industry and with communities that were part of the founding and development of the Australian wine industry. I'm also an Australian who is deeply passionate about this industry. While I'm not directly related, I'm certainly proud of the history of what the Penfolds name and brand stand for in Australian wine excellence.

Australia was always earmarked as a wine-producing nation. From James Cook's Endeavour voyage, Australia was identified as an ideal place for producing wine. Vines were planted within the first months of the First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove. I'm particularly proud that part of the story of Australian wine begins in the electorate of Lyne. The Paterson Valley, and particularly Tocal, played an important role in the very early development of viticulture in colonial Australia. James Phillips Webber took up Tocal in 1822, and during the 1820s and early 1830s he established a vineyard there as part of what became one of the Hunter's pioneering agricultural properties. This was about the time my own Penfold ancestors came to Australia as farm labourers to work on the Bona Vista property in Paterson, which is very close to Tocal.

By 1832, Webber had three acres of vines at Tocal. That might sound modest today, but at the time there were only 15½ acres of vines recorded across the entire Hunter. What happened at Tocal did not stay at Tocal. In 1834, Webber supplied oporto and gouais grape cuttings from Tocal to another pioneering Hunter grower, George Wyndham at Dalwood, which is just on the other side of the Hunter River from my own electorate. Wyndham would go on to become one of the great early names in Australian wine, so there's a direct historical thread running from those early vines at Tocal through the pioneering vineyards of the Hunter and into the development of one of Australia's most famous wine regions.

Long before Australian wine was winning international awards or becoming a major export industry and long before Hunter Valley semillon was known around the world, pioneers were experimenting with vines in the Paterson Valley in my electorate of Lyne. They were sharing cuttings, testing varieties against Australian conditions and learning through plenty of trial and error how to grow grapes and make wine in this country. I'm very proud that Tocal and the Paterson Valley, in my electorate, have their place right at the beginning of Australia's wine industry.

The coalition supports the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. We support it because there's a genuine imbalance in bargaining power in parts of Australia's wine industry, particularly between grape growers and large winemakers. Where voluntary arrangements have failed to deliver fair outcomes, there's a legitimate role for government to establish clear rules of engagement. That has long been the coalition's approach. Coalition governments introduced and strengthened mandatory codes across agriculture, including the dairy code, the horticulture code, and the food and grocery code, so we support the direction of this legislation, but we should also be clear about what this bill does and what it does not do.

The Emerson review found that grape growers have too little bargaining power against large winemakers and that the existing voluntary code is no longer fit for purpose. The government accepted those recommendations in December last year and committed to developing a mandatory code of conduct. This bill is not that mandatory code, but it lays the groundwork for it.

Schedule 1 amends the Wine Australia Act to give Wine Australia an explicit function to conduct grape and wine industry surveys and allows information to be shared with the ACCC to help determine which businesses should be covered by the mandatory code. There are safeguards around that information and civil penalties for its misuse.

Schedule 2 amends the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Act to allow ABARES to share levy payer contact information with authorised contractors to improve participation in agricultural surveys. Importantly, this bill does not change agricultural levies, who pays them or how they are calculated. The coalition welcomes the fact that important safeguards around personal information have been placed in the legislation itself rather than simply being left to regulation, but greater transparency could be provided to farmers. There is no requirement for levy payers to be notified when their information is shared with a third party and no mechanism for them to opt out. That is something the government should continue to look at.

But the broader point is that this bill is a small piece of a much bigger problem. Australia's wine industry is in serious trouble. There are around 262,000,000 litres more wine sitting in storage than can be commercially sustained. The 2026 grape harvest was the smallest in 25 years, yet grape prices continue to decline. Domestic wine consumption is at its lowest level in more than a decade, and global wine consumption has fallen to its lowest level since 1961. Australian Grape and Wine is right to describe this not simply as a temporary downturn but as a structural crisis. Behind those numbers are growers, winemakers, cellar door operators and families who've spent generations building their businesses.

That matters in my electorate of Lyne. When people think about wine in New South Wales, they often think about the Hunter Valley. The Hunter is one of Australia's great wine regions, and its geographical indication stretches much further than the cellar doors around Pokolbin that most tourists know. The electorate of Lyne reaches into the northern Hunter, and across the Mid North Coast we have a diverse collection of smaller vineyards, wineries and cellar doors. Cassegrain, Old Inn Road, Tranquil Vale, Bago Maze and Wine, Great Lakes Paddocks, Villa d'Esta Vineyard, Jacaranda Estate, Gloucester River Wines, Faulls Ridge Wine, Mograni Creek Estate, Mill Creek Vineyard and Gap Hill Wines are all part of our local wine story. They're not necessarily the names that many people speak about but still very valuable contributors to the Australian wine industry and to the regional economy across the Lyne electorate. These wineries stretch from right down in the south-west of my electorate in Luskintyre all the way up to just east of Wauchope.

These aren't just places that make and sell wine. They also attract visitors. They employ local people. They buy from other local businesses and support restaurants, accommodation providers and tourism operators. Some of them also host weddings. Perhaps the member for Casey one day may need additional employment—hopefully not. He's also welcome to come and see some of these wineries in my electorate. These wineries are part of the character and diversity of our regional economy, and it's fantastic to trace my electorate's contribution over two centuries to the vineyards, winemakers and cellar doors operating across my electorate today. Nationally, wine related tourism attracts around 7½ million visitors each year, with visitors spending around $11.6 billion in Australia's wine regions. The broader grape and wine industry supports more than 203,000 direct and indirect jobs, and contributes more than $51 billion in gross economic output. When this industry hurts, regional Australia hurts, and communities like mine feel it.

That is why I'm disappointed that the Albanese government's response has been so inadequate. Earlier this year, Australian Grape and Wine went to the government with a serious, practical and costed plan. It proposed support for business viability and transition, concessional loans, mental health and rural wellbeing, rebuilding export markets, stimulating domestic demand and regional tourism and properly implementing the mandatory code. The total package was $139.25 million over the forward estimates.

But the Albanese government didn't take it up. Instead, at precisely the time the wine industry needed help attracting people into regional wine communities, the government moved to pause or cut the Wine Tourism and Cellar Door Grant Program for two years out to 2030. That program provides eligible wine and cider producers with grants of up to $100,000 linked to cellar-door sales. That decision made absolutely no sense. If we have too much wine and insufficient demand, why reduce support for businesses bringing consumers directly to wineries and tourists into regional communities?

The government cannot control a decline in global wine consumption, but it can control how it responds, and we should remember how dramatically the industry was hit by the loss of the Chinese market. Before China's tariffs, that market was worth more than $1.2 billion a year to Australian wine exporters. It collapsed to less than $10 million. You can't simply switch off wine production. Grapevines remain in the ground, wine remains in tanks and barrels, and businesses still have debts, wages and bills to pay. That surplus puts pressure on winemakers and ultimately flows back to the prices growers receive, which brings me to another problem this bill does not address: market power doesn't stop winery gate.

The government is looking at the bargaining imbalance between growers and winemakers, which is fair enough, but what about the bargaining imbalance between winemakers and the major liquor retailers? The four largest liquor retailers have been estimated to control around 70 per cent of the market. Endeavour Group, through Dan Murphy's and BWS, is one of the dominant players, and major retailers increasingly compete with their suppliers through private-label and vertically integrated wine businesses. As Australian Grape and Wine has pointed out, that can leave a winemaker in the extraordinary position where a major retailer is simultaneously their biggest customer and one of their biggest competitors. That matters because pressure at the retail end of the supply chain eventually flows back to the grower. There's little point addressing the balance between growers and winemakers while ignoring concentrated market power further down the chain. We need competitive markets. We don't need government setting the price of a bottle of wine, but competitive markets only work when competition is genuine and small businesses have a realistic ability to negotiate.

Australian Grape and Wine has also pointed to the barrier small businesses face in challenging unfair conduct—that is, the cost of litigation, the imbalance in resources and fear of commercial retribution. Those issues need to be taken seriously as the government considers the next stage of these reforms. While the government is suddenly discovering the merits of mandatory agricultural codes, perhaps it could dust off the work already done for the poultry industry.

Poultry growers—many of them in my electorate—have been waiting for action on their own code of conduct and their own bargaining power problem for years. Maybe the chickens will come home to roost before the government finally gets around to dealing with this one.

The coalition supports this bill. A properly designed mandatory code can improve transparency and provide clearer and fairer rules between growers and winemakers, but nobody should pretend this legislation fixes the Australian wine industry. It doesn't address the enormous wine surplus, it doesn't rebuild international demand, it doesn't address concentrated market power further down the supply chain, and it doesn't provide the structural support the industry itself says it needs.

Our wine industry is a great Australian industry. It turns Australian agricultural produce into a high-value manufactured product, exports an Australian brand to the world and brings millions of visitors into regional communities. In places like Tocal and Paterson, its history reaches back almost to the beginning of European agriculture in this country. So, yes, let's give growers a fairer deal and get the mandatory code right, but, if the Albanese government is serious about the future of the Australian wine industry, it needs to look at the whole supply chain and the structural challenges facing the industry. Australian grape growers, winemakers and regional communities deserve much more than this bill alone.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Electoral Matters) | Link to this | Hansard source

It seems relevant, while we're talking about the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026, to say, if we could get a little of what the member for Lyne has and bottle it, this place would be better off!

It gives me great pleasure to rise and talk about wine yet again in this place, coming as I do from the little patch of Western Australia called Forrest, which is home to unquestionably the greatest wine grown in Australia. There are many in this place who join me in a little friendly rivalry as we compare and contrast little emerging regions like the Barossa and the Hunter with Margaret River. Nonetheless, when it comes to this bill, I think the problem is in the bill's snapshot, and that is that there is no financial impact on the budget, as the explanatory memorandum makes clear.

The problem with that is that the wine industry, as many speakers today have lamented, is going through a tough and sordid time. It is not due to one bad growing season or one bad vintage in one region but, rather, a structural surplus of wine in the Australian market across all categories, from that very premium wine grown in Margaret River right through to the more mass produced wine and the fruitgrowers who provide that fruit through the Riverina and other areas.

The industry has been calling for sensible, targeted and limited financial support. But that's not what we're here to talk about today, and that is a great shame. Nonetheless, the coalition is supportive of this bill, because it responds to the findings of the Emerson review, and the member for Lyne was just discussing that imbalance whereby fruitgrowers have such little bargaining power with larger winemakers and how the existing voluntary code of conduct in that space is no longer fit for purpose.

The coalition has a proud history when it comes to codes of conduct across the agricultural, viticultural and horticultural spaces. When we were last in government we introduced and indeed strengthened mandatory codes of conduct for the dairy industry, the horticultural industry, and the food and grocery sector. We did that to improve the transparency, fairness and confidence that need to exist in our agricultural supply chains. As we see it, mandatory codes have an important role where there is a significant imbalance in bargaining power. These codes do that by providing clear rules of engagement that allow markets to continue operating competitively.

So, given that the government accepted the Emerson review's findings in December and committed to developing a mandatory code of conduct alongside industry—and that's most important, that this was done in close consultation and collaboration with industry, with bodies like Australian Grape & Wine—we find ourselves in a position to support the bill. Of course, that mandatory code itself is not in this bill, but the important legislative groundwork has been laid by enabling information-sharing that the ACCC needs in order to determine who the code should apply to ahead of the commencement of that code at the start of next year.

Importantly, there was movement from the government through that process to ameliorate legitimate concerns from growers, which I'd certainly heard in my patch, around the mandatory collection and provision of information and ensuring that that process was something industry could get around. Fairer commercial arrangements between growers and winemakers that will flow from this code of conduct—at least the intention is that they will flow from this code of conduct—represent an important step towards restoring confidence in the sector, which, as I said has been through a very tough couple of years. Those structural challenges—the structural surplus that we see across wine in Australia and indeed globally—extend well beyond this legislation.

The sector is currently carrying some 262 million litres more wine than is otherwise commercially sustainable on current consumption, which is placing enormous downward pressure on prices through the supply chain. That's, of course, if winemakers are able to move their product at all, and the feedback that I have from certain growers and winemakers is that they've got storage sheds full of produced wine that's been labelled and that's obviously incurred all of that capital cost upfront, and then years later there's simply no market for it. The heartbreak of those providers in having to make decisions to either destroy stock because they can't afford to keep storing it or face insolvency as a business is pretty hard to listen to, I can tell you.

The 2026 grape harvest was the smallest in 25 years across Australia's growing regions, yet grape prices continue to decline. Think about that for a second. This is the smallest yielding season in a quarter of a century, yet prices fell. That underscores the nature of the challenge facing the wine industry in Australia, and it's why that challenge extends beyond one bad season. This is an industry facing very, very serious headwinds. At the same time, of course, it's not just limited to Australia. We've seen wine consumption fall into its lowest level globally in over half a century as well. Whilst I'm not the biggest fan of the Albanese government, I'm certainly not going to hold them accountable for fighting against those very strong international market pressures. We do welcome steps that make our domestic market as fair and transparent as possible, which, as I said, this bill is a small step towards.

The other thing that is good about it in our view is that there is a civil penalty for the misuse of shared information, which, as I said, is an important movement from the government in relation to those concerns from industry through the consultation process, and we're very pleased to see that. It narrows the restrictions and includes safeguards requiring third parties to not further disclose information, which ensures that when they do so it's the minimum necessary information that's being shared and it is de-identified. That keeps the commercial sensitivities of the industry, which are understandably heightened at a time of great structural challenge, somewhat ameliorated.

The bill doesn't change agricultural levies, who has to pay them or how they're calculated. It's confined literally to the information-sharing and the technical administrative amendments that enable this to happen. It is a good response to the Emerson review's finding that the voluntary code of conduct that had previously existed was no longer making the market function and its finding that the mandatory code was an appropriate and, importantly, proportionate response. Where those safeguards around personal information are contained in the legislation itself, it basically eliminates future regulations either undermining the confidence of industry or allowing the commerciality of the industry to be undermined through some sort of leak, intentional or otherwise, and it does tend to happen of course. We see bad actors exploiting data being held by any major organisation, government notwithstanding.

The government has advised that similar arrangements for this which have existed for many years mean that this bill is not creating an entirely new practice, and that's a fair enough argument to make. But we do think that these growers deserve that greater transparency around how their information—their sensitive, personal, commercial information—was being handled, stored and promulgated to third parties. Supporting the bill that's before the House today should not prevent the government from strengthening those transparency measures into the future, and I do think that's an important point to make because, as I said, the very commerciality of the industry which is undergoing that great structural challenge is perilous.

While we are supportive of the legislation, this bill alone is not going to be the magic silver bullet that restores the fortunes of our wine industry. As I said earlier in this very scintillating contribution to the House, the greatest shame of this is that there's no budget impact, because earlier this year the wine industry, through Australian Grape & Wine which is a very active and engaged peak body for the industry, put forward a very practical, costed and sustainable package of measures in its pre-budget submission to help resolve the structural challenges that the market is facing. The simple reality is that we've got too many vines growing too much fruit. Those proposals that Australian Grape & Wine put forward which had a very limited budget impact would have seen those structural forces change over time. This is actually helping growers to pull grapes out and, as the member for Lyne was touching on earlier, through the Wine Tourism and Cellar Door Grant program, find additional markets to distribute their fruit, for example, through their own cellar doors.

Now that was a program that helped wineries attract visitors. Certainly in my electorate, it grew regional tourism and diversified the income for smaller producers. It's important for the House to remember that not all wineries are huge enterprises with big showy cellar door operations with dozens of staff. Indeed the cellar door grant program was targeted at those producers to support them in maintaining a viable cellar door when such an operation wasn't otherwise viable, and it is a great shame it was pulled in this year's budget. That was a $10 million saving, which, in a context of an industry already doing it tough, I thought was pretty mean and nasty.

As I say, this is a global factor, and removing that support for cellar doors sends exactly the wrong sort of message to one of Australia's most important regional industries. In a regional electorate like mine, it supports those local jobs and helps to diversify the economy away from just things like mining. We consistently talk about being a dig and ship economy. We should be digging more, drilling more, growing more, catching more, and these sorts of programs are important to support that. So, as I say, it's not a silver bullet. This is an important small step in the right direction. We will be critical where we have to be and supportive where we can be.

Seeing the continued move to shift more costs onto Australian wine producers through higher export cost recovery charges under the government and increasing regulatory costs is akin to asking these growers, who are literally bleeding cash, to pay more while they're getting less support from the government they're paying tax too. That seems to me to be a real slap in the face, and I'm very pleased that the member for Barker has joined us to provide some sort of a rebuttal to my claims about that little-known emerging wine region called Barossa.

Producers are paying more, and they're getting less. We're seeing reduced support for agriculture across the board. But, indeed, the wine industry is facing some of its toughest times, and this is really, really unacceptable to us. We'll back sensible reforms like this, but it can't be seen as the entire solution. That's why members on this side of the House will continue to fight tooth and nail for their growers.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting for Fisheries and Forestry) | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak to the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 at a time where the Australian wine industry is facing its greatest challenge of all time. I do not seek to catastrophise the situation, but if you're at home listening to this broadcast type the words 'vineyard removal' into your search engine. You will see video after video after video of front-end loaders and backhoe adapted bobcats removing vineyards across this country. No region, not even exalted areas like the Barossa in my electorate, is safe from this scourge of vine removal.

In terms of Barker, let me just set a few things straight. As the member for Barker, I often think that I have responsibilities for wine in this place, or at least that I'm the member for wine! And that is because Barker produces more wine by volume or value than any other division in this place. Producers from my electorate of Barker span the breadth of the industry, from high-volume commercial offerings in inland wine regions like the Riverland to the ultra-premium brands in places like the Barossa, the Coonawarra and other regions, whether Padthaway, Wrattonbully or Cape Jaffa. I'm loath to mention them all because, of course, I'll have producers from the regions I don't mention saying, 'Well, what about us?' I give a particular shout-out to the cool-climate producers in and around Mount Gambier that are sometimes forgotten about.

The reality is that this industry is in crisis. The industry hasn't been profitable for a number of years, and it's fair to say no region across Australia is currently profitable. It's easy—as those opposite have from time to time done, when it suited their narrative—to blame the breakdown in the relationship with China and perhaps reference a former prime minister and his actions around COVID. But the truth is: global demand for table wine has been in decline for a very long time. In fact, if you map it, you can see that about a billion litres—that's a billion, with a B—less table wine is consumed year on year.

If we think about why that is, we can start with a few factors. Firstly, I think everyone in this place and perhaps outside of it realises that the globe is going through a cost-of-living crisis. So that's a factor. The second factor is: table wine competes with other alternatives. Other alcohol substitutes seem to be more on trend, and we see it with our own friendship networks, don't we? Once upon a time, you'd buy a bottle of wine and four or five glasses. Now, someone wants a daiquiri. Someone else wants an espresso martini. Someone wants a cider, someone wants a ginger beer, and someone will have a glass of wine as well. That's what's happening, right?

The last thing is something we probably should celebrate. My generation, rightly or wrongly, was often measured by how much we could drink, particularly here in Australia—and I put my hand up. As a young uni student, I participated in all the bad behaviours. You might believe that; it's not hard to believe! But this generation, I like to think, measures itself on how much you can lift. There's a real push for wellbeing, spending time at the gym, being healthy and these things, and that's not necessarily consistent with serious consumption of Australia's premium wine—and wine otherwise. We're seeing this global trend. It's not an Australian trend; it's a global trend.

I mentioned, at the beginning of this contribution, vineyard removal. That's not an Australia-specific phenomenon. They're removing vineyards in the Napa Valley. They're removing vineyards in Bordeaux. But there is a difference, and that difference emanates from this place and other decision-making theatres like this at a state level. In those jurisdictions I just spoke of, growers are being actively supported to transition. I've been calling on this for a very long time. It is cruel to sit down around a kitchen tables at farms, with husband-and-wife producers in their 80s—some of whom don't have great command of the English language, and some of whom share my cultural background, so we can speak Italian together—to explain to them that this isn't a small blip in the price of Aussie wine or the global price of wine; this is a permanent change and one that has been a step-change. And, yes, their vineyard isn't worth anything. In fact, it's the value of the land itself, as bare land, minus the cost of removing the infrastructure that's on it, which isn't insignificant.

What upsets me about this is that I rang the bell on this about four years ago. I called on those opposite to do something serious about supporting the transition. Why do I say 'transition'? I say it because not everyone is a grower. Not everyone can grow things. Now, that might sound like a silly statement to make, but it's true, so we can't afford to lose these growers. We need to help them transition to other horticultural commodities. But it's expensive. It's much more expensive than the kind of farming my parents do, where you put in a crop one year and put in another crop the next year, or where you graze cattle or sheep. You not only have to remove the infrastructure; you also then have to plant new permanent plantings. There might be an almond tree, an olive tree, citrus and other things. Then, before you know it, you've got to wait two to three years for any sort of income. So you not only have the sunk cost of removing what's there; you also then have to spend the capital to put the new plantings there. Then you've got to wait and wait for an exceptionally long time. That's why these growers have needed support. It's something that I've been calling for for a very long time, and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity with this bill to restate the call—which, I've got to say, is supported by Australian Grape & Wine—to achieve that outcome of a transition.

Do you know why else it's important? These communities rely on this horticultural effort. If you remove that vineyard, then the job goes. When the job goes, the employee goes. When the employee goes, you've not only lost the economic activity that comes with that; you've also lost a student at a school or a volunteer at the CFS. Communities, particularly regional communities, break down.

And there's a further factor in many communities I represent. They rely on collective infrastructure to move water around—irrigation trusts. These irrigation trusts effectively extract water from the River Murray and pump it to properties all along the river. It's the reason why, when you fly over the Riverland, for example—and I'm using the Riverland as an example because it's the epicentre where the most harm is felt. It has the industry, the commercial sector, which is suffering the most pain, and it's where assets are most tied to this issue of horticulture. In the south-east, I've seen vineyards removed, fences placed around properties and livestock grazing there quite quickly.

But I will get back to collective assets and the irrigation trusts. Say that I'm running a vineyard block, my colleague the member for Groom is running a vineyard block, the next person is and the next person is. If I stay in the industry and the irrigation trust needs to pass over the member for Groom's property, the following member's property and the following member's property to get to the last property that's still growing, the costs of running that trust are no longer divided amongst five or six—they're divided amongst two. And, of course, we end up with these fallow blocks, which are another real challenge.

The ask of government is a pretty simple one: support growers in the Riverland and the industry more generally to transition. This bill is not what's currently needed, but it is something we support. So I'm quite happy to see it pass the House, but it is a really small part of what needs to occur right now.

I've spoken about the need for growers to transition, but we've also got to sell more Australian wine. I call on those opposite to have another think about Export Market Development Grants that have tapped out. Support producers who want to stay in this sector to go overseas and export their wine.

It's a combination of things right now. We need to reduce the amount that we produce. That's happening naturally, sadly, without the support of government, which I worry about because some of the best producers who are making the most hard nosed economic decisions are the very people we don't want to lose from this industry, whilst others who haven't got perhaps the same level of business acumen are staying in the industry, like smaller holdings et cetera. But, at the same time, there's nothing being done to support increased exports at scale, or at least nothing I'm seeing.

This sector feels like it's been forgotten. I speak to their representatives, Australian Grape and Wine. I speak to local producers all the way along the value chain. They've got a sense that those opposite think that, if they just ignore this issue for long enough, it'll go away, and it might. People will make decisions. They'll remove vineyards and recalibrate supply and demand and these things. But that will cause immeasurable hurt for particular groups, individuals and family businesses. It will really harm communities because it's not done with any rhyme or reason.

What those opposite ought to have done as a very bare minimum—and let's be clear. I don't Support water buybacks for the same reasons why I don't like the idea of communities shrinking because we're having to remove vineyards. I want growers to transition from viticulture to some other horticultural endeavour, retain that economic activity in the community and keep regional communities and river communities otherwise resilient. But what those opposite have is a policy to remove water from the river buybacks.

Now, given that that was their policy, do you think they could have solved for this problem at the same time? They could have calibrated a program of buybacks that said: 'You know what? We're going to come into particular grape growing communities where we'd like to acquire water for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, and we're going to target older growers and individuals that are principally invested in red wine production, because that's the category most oversupplied.' With the funding they had available to acquire that water for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, they could have achieved their goal, their target, which, I'll be clear, is one I don't support. But they could have achieved their goal and at the same time supported this industry to recalibrate, to reduce supply and to bring supply closer to what is likely to be long-term demand for Australian red and white wines.

But instead that didn't happen. I'm not sure why it didn't happen. I hope it wasn't the politics of punishment. Sometimes I worry in this place that that's where we're at. But that didn't happen. And right now we've got a wine industry that's screaming for support. I attend more forums about mental health in the wine industry than I do wine tastings right now. That's how worried we are about this sector. Those opposite need to start taking it seriously.

Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to associate my words with the words of the member for Barker. The wine industry in Australia, particularly in the region of South Australia, is on its knees and it is not getting any support from this government. Wine Australia put in a very decent pre-budget review to this Labor government. Not only did the government ignore it, but they actually took out the cellar door program that's keeping some of them alive. It was very, very disappointing, and the industry is rightly frustrated.

Regional South Australia, Grey, is home to the world leading Riesling vineyards of the Clare Valley. Ask most people what the Clare Valley is worth to this country, and they'll tell you it makes fantastic wine. It absolutely does. Ask them to put a number on it, and most won't even be close. Grape production in the Clare Valley is worth around $30 million to $40 million a year, and given the issues we're having, we're actually at a 25-year low in both production and exports from this region. Wine sales add another $150 million per year. Tourism, built around that wine industry, brings a further $162 million to the sector. That's a staggering $300 million in a regional economy. Now that is not a boutique industry. That's jobs in vineyards, cellars, hospitality and tourism. This is the reason that towns across the Clare Valley have a tourism trade at all. I raise those numbers because they show exactly what's at stake and what I want to talk about today—wine, and not just the wine industry but also what's happening to the people who grow the grapes and make the wine in regional South Australia, and what this government is doing and not doing about it.

Let's turn to the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 in front of us. It amends the Wine Australia Act to allow information sharing with the ACCC. It amends the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Act 2024 to let ABARES share levy payer details with authorised contractors. It's a technical bill. It doesn't fix the wine industry's problem, but it does one useful thing. It gives the ACCC the information it needs to work out what a mandatory code of conduct should apply to, ahead of that code starting 1 January 2027.

The coalition supports this bill. We support it because it responds directly to the Emerson review, which found that grape growers have too little bargaining power against large winemakers and that the voluntary code we have now is no longer fit for purpose. The government accepted that finding in December last year and promised to develop a mandatory code during 2026. This bill is a step on that path, but it's not the destination.

I want to be clear about what this bill does. It gives Wine Australia an explicit function to run grape and wine industry surveys on top of the National Vintage Survey that it already runs. It sets up a framework, so Wine Australia can share relevant information with the ACCC. It introduces a civil penalty if that information is misused. It narrows an existing restriction on ABARES sharing levy paper contact details with third parties, with safeguards attached. Now, those third parties can't pass information on further, and only minimal necessary information can be shared, or it must be de-identified. This bill doesn't touch the levies themselves. It doesn't change what growers pay, or how those levies are calculated.

I will say, though, that while I welcome that the safeguards are written into this bill itself rather than left to future legislation, there's still no requirement to notify levy payers when their information is shared, and there's no way for them to opt out. The government tells us this kind of arrangement has existed for years. Maybe so, but growers deserve to know how their information is being used. Supporting this bill today shouldn't stop the government from fixing that gap later.

Now to the industry itself, because that's really what I came here to talk about today. Australia's wine industry is in serious trouble. We are sitting on around 262 million litres more wine than the market can absorb. That's not a minor imbalance. I go back to the wool crisis last century. Farmers stored wool on their farms, in their sheds, and the price of wool never increased until we got rid of that backlog. That's what we're facing in this country right now. It's a wall of oversupply, pressing down on prices right through the supply chain, from the grower to the cellar door.

And here's the part that should worry every member in this place. The 2026 harvest was the smallest in 25 years, yet grape prices still fell. When the crop shrinks and prices fall away, that tells you that the problem isn't a bad season; it tells you that it is structural. Growers in our inland regions have been hit the hardest, like in the member for Barker's region of the Riverland. On top of that, global wine consumption has dropped to its lowest level in more than 60 years. We can't fix that from Canberra. But we can make sure our own domestic market is fair and transparent, and right now it isn't.

A few weeks ago I sat down with Senator Anne Ruston in Clare for a wine industry round table. We sat down with growers and winemakers from across the region. They were telling us in plain terms what's happening to them. These are people who've been in the industry for decades, who've built family businesses over generations, telling us they can't get a fair price, can't get a buyer and do not know how much longer they can hold on. That's what I heard sitting across the table from them.

On that note, I want to talk just briefly about the container deposit scheme. This is what really frustrates winegrowers today. They are under so much pressure, and this will be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. The container deposit scheme was brought in during the 1970s in South Australia to fix the problem of littering. But there is no problem to be fixed in the wine sector. Wine is consumed at home, in private, or it's consumed in a restaurant. There is no issue with littering of wine bottles in our nation. But these rules impose up to $2 per wine bottle on our industry, which simply cannot afford that. If this deposit can't be removed, it must be harmonised across our states and territories.

Regional South Australia has some of the finest wine country in this nation, and Clare Valley is known around the world. These aren't marginal industries in my electorate. They are the backbone of towns. They employ people in vineyards, in cellars and in hospitality. They bring visitors into regional towns, who then spend their money at the local bakery and the local pub. When the wine industry struggles, it's not just a statistic. It's a grower in Clare who can't move his or her fruit. It's a family winery wondering whether they'll open the door next season—and I tell you what, a lot of them are leaving town. It's a town that depends on the tourists that those businesses bring in.

What has this government done for these people, at a time when they are asking for help? Earlier this year, Australian Grape & Wine put together a comprehensive and sensible submission ahead of the budget. It wasn't a wish list. It was industry doing exactly what we asked industry to do: to come to government with practical, considered proposals to help grapegrowers and winemakers get through a difficult period. What did the government do? Nothing. There was not one dollar of new funding for the wine industry in this budget. It was worse than nothing, actually. Instead of backing the industry, the government has decided to phase out the $10 million Wine Tourism and Cellar Door Grant program. This is a program that helps small wineries attract visitors, build their cellar door experience and diversify their income away from just grape prices. For a lot of these businesses, the cellar door is what keeps them viable when grape prices are down. It's tourism income, direct sales and a reason for people to make the drive out to the Clare Valley in the first place, or indeed the Flinders Rangers, which makes some fantastic wine. And this government's answer, at that exact moment the industry is under pressure, is to take away that support.

I don't think the government has thought this one through—or, if they have, they've decided that regional wine just isn't a priority. Either way, the outcome is the same for the people I represent. Growers who already can't find a buyer for their fruit will now watch as the tourism support that helped their neighbours survive gets wound back, too. That's more pressure, at the worst possible time, on communities that are already doing it tough. And it doesn't stop there.

This bill makes some administrative changes to how levies work, but it does nothing about the bigger problem of the levy system as a whole. The government's own Productivity Commission found Australia's agricultural levy system to be—a word that I can't pronounce. Around 248 different levies are administered through roughly 70 separate arrangements. That's not a system; that's a maze. It creates unnecessary complexity, adds to the administrative burden on producers and drags on productivity. Producers already put millions of dollars into that system every year to fund research, biosecurity and development. They're entitled to expect it to be efficient and transparent. Instead, this government keeps making piecemeal changes around the edges while the fundamental problem sits there untouched.

At the same time as all of this, the government has increased export cost recovery charges and other regulatory costs on producers. So the message to our wine growers over this term has been pay more and get less: high costs, cuts to the programs that actually helped and no new funding.

I want to be fair here. The coalition has a long record of backing mandatory codes where there's a genuine imbalance of market power. A voluntary code isn't cutting it. We introduced and strengthened the dairy code of conduct, the Horticulture Code of Conduct and the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct because, in each of those cases, we recognised that without clear rules of engagement, the party with the least power in the chain gets squeezed.

The Emerson review found the same imbalance in wine. A mandatory code is an appropriate response, and this bill is one piece of the groundwork for it. That's why we support it today. But supporting this bill cannot be where this government's response to the wine industry begins and ends. A mandatory code that starts in January next year is welcome, but it will not put money back into growers' pockets. It will not replace the $10 million this government is taking out of the cellar door program, and it will not undo a budget that gave the wine industry nothing despite that industry doing everything right.

If this government is serious about the future of Australia's wine industry, serious about towns like those in the Clare Valley that depend on it, then it needs to do more than pass a technical information-sharing bill and call it a day. It needs to reverse that decision to phase out the Wine Tourism and Cellar Door Grants program.

I'd also like to remind this House that the Minister for Trade and Tourism lives in the Clare Valley—he lives in the electorate of Grey—and the wine growers are calling on him to do something. I'm calling on him to do something! This government needs to actually engage with what Australian Grape & Wine have put forward, and it needs to stop loading additional costs onto an industry that is already carrying more oversupply, lower prices and less global demand than it has seen in decades.

I've heard what this feels like for growers and winemakers in Clare. It isn't a crisis they've created; it's a product of global market conditions well beyond their control. The government response here at home has, so far, taken support away rather than add it. The coalition will keep supporting sensible, practical reforms like the one before us. Regional wine communities in South Australia and right across the country deserve better than what this government is giving them.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill, the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026, implements part of the government's response to Dr Craig Emerson's review of the wine and grape sector by establishing a mandatory code of conduct for wine grape purchasers and expanding Wine Australia's powers to collect industry data.

Dr Emerson's review found what growers in the community and across the country have told us for years: a voluntary unenforceable code has left too many growers exposed to unfair contracting practices and imbalances in bargaining power with winemakers. So a mandatory code backed by ACCC enforcement is a sensible and overdue correction.

I'm glad that this bill clarifies the objects of the wine act as a precursor to the mandatory code commencing on 1 January 2027, but I also want to use this debate to raise a fairness question that the bill does not yet address—a question which this parliament has not yet addressed but which has been put in front of the inquiry of the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability into alcohol and other drugs by a number of expert groups and stakeholders. I have the honour of serving as the deputy chair on that committee, and I feel that I need to raise the issue in the House at this time. That issue is how we tax wine. Every major alcohol category in Australia other than wine is taxed volumetrically, with a fixed rate per litre of alcohol scaled to strength. Wine is the exception. It's taxed under the wine equalisation tax, a 29 per cent levy on the wholesale value, with a rebate for small producers. That structure does not tax harm; it does not tax alcohol strength; it just taxes price. As a result, a high-value boutique wine from the Yarra Valley or the Mornington Peninsula incurs proportionately much more tax per standard drink than the cheapest cask wine on the shelf. The consequences of that are pretty stark. Cask wine is the cheapest alcoholic beverage available in this country. The mean price for cask wine is 54c per standard drink, but at the bottom end you can get it for as little as 24c for a standard drink. You can't buy a schooner, a can or a nip of spirits for anywhere near that price.

The gap is not an accident of the market; it's a direct product of how this parliament has chosen to tax wine. And it matters because Australia is, right now, experiencing the highest rate of alcohol induced deaths in over two decades. The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education has documented in depth what that cheap, high-volume product does in practice. The harm caused by too easy access to rubbish, cheap alcohol is the direct and foreseeable result of a tax system that this parliament has left unreformed for 50 years. None of this is a new issue. None of this is news to Treasury or to Australia's peak health bodies. Ken Henry's 2010 review of Australia's tax system recommended a volumetric tax on alcohol based on evidence and based on the social cost of that harm. It singled out the wine equalisation tax because of its perverse effect on the price of cheap wine. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists have jointly noted that replacing the WET with a volumetric tax has now been recommended by nine separate sequential government reviews. The RACP has put the problem pretty bluntly. It says that the current wine tax actually provides preferential treatment for cheap wine. Cancer Council Australia's position statement calls for a volumetric excise tax across all alcohol products, together with abolition of the wine equalisation tax. Cancer Council warns that a tax based on the wholesale value rather than the alcohol content has already contributed, and continues to contribute, to an oversupply of cheap, high-volume wine products, including cask wine.

When the current National Alcohol Strategy was released in 2019 without a volumetric tax, the then President of the Australian Medical Association said that that was most disappointing and that doctors treating the short-term sequelae and lifelong complications of alcohol fuelled harm deserve a response as serious as the problem itself. Addiction medicine specialist Professor Kate Conigrave, who is a director at the Foundation of Alcohol Research and Education, has pointed to the fact that we have broad agreement amongst virtually all Australian health bodies that reforming alcohol taxation should be a key priority for this government. In her words, we shouldn't be treating alcohol 'like it's flour or wool'.

The National Alcohol Strategy 2019-2028 itself lists volumetric taxation and a minimum floor price amongst the reform options which we should be considering to manage the price and availability of alcohol. FARE's recent submissions to the health committee's ongoing inquiry into the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs set out exactly what that reform should look like. We should continue to index the excise on beer and spirits, replace the wine equalisation tax with a volumetric rate and introduce a properly indexed minimum unit price in every state and territory. The Northern Territory's experience with the minimum unit price has already shown measurable reductions in alcohol related harm. Modelling shows that a minimum unit price of at least $1.30 per standard drink could reduce alcohol use in Australia by 1.5 standard drinks per week, on average, per Australian.

So I put it to the House: this is not just a public health argument; it's also an argument for the very wine growers that this bill is seeking to protect. The code of conduct in this bill exists because growers of quality products are being squeezed out by a market that simply does not value what they produce. A tax system that rewards the cheapest possible bulk product at the expense of quality does the same thing from a different direction. Fixing the contract is not enough if our tax settings keep subsidising the product that competes hardest against what our better wine growers are actually trying to sell.

I support this bill and the fairer trading arrangements that it will deliver for wine grape growers, but I ask the government not to treat fairness in this sector as finished business. Growers deserve a market that isn't distorted against quality. Communities deserve a tax system that doesn't quietly subsidise the cheapest and most harmful product on the shelf. Twenty-six years after the wine equalisation tax was designed and 16 years after the Henry review told us that we need to fix it, it's well past time that this parliament did. To that end, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Wine Equalisation Tax (WET) taxes wine on its wholesale value rather than its alcohol content, unlike every other major alcohol category, which are taxed volumetrically;

(b) this structure subsidises the cheapest, highest-volume wine products, including cask wine, which can be purchased for as little as 24 cents per standard drink; and

(c) reform of the WET has been recommended by at least thirteen separate government reviews, including the 2010 Henry Tax Review, and is supported by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Cancer Council Australia, the Australian Medical Association, and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education; and

(2) calls on the government to bring forward, without further delay, a plan to replace the WET with a volumetric tax on wine, consistent with the taxation of beer and spirits".

Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment, and I reserve my right to speak.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

When I first came into this parliament in 2010, I proudly represented the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, where so many of the fine wines that Australians drink and Australia exports are produced. Whether it's De Bortoli or Casella or many of the other fine wine producers in that area, as far as the grape industry and the wine industry are concerned, water legislation has been of vital importance.

In recent times—late last year certainly—we've seen De Bortoli, a family generational business, pulling out vines. This is a tragedy. Just today we've seen SunRice issue a media statement in relation to workers that it is being forced to make redundant, particularly at its Leeton and Deniliquin mills. That is rice; I appreciate the difference. But that is ninety-two people put out of work. Thankfully, 14 of them have been given other jobs within the operation. But there are still, in all, 78 people who've lost their jobs because of water policy. It's 78 incomes, 78 families affected and the hopes of 78 people—more, in fact, if you count the families—dashed because of poor water policy.

When we talk about wine and we talk about the grape industry, the same applies. Yes, I get that we have a wine glut worldwide at the moment, and that is also an issue. It certainly was brought into focus with the recent issues around the Middle East with the Strait of Hormuz and the lack of availability of fuel. There were suggestions that the oversupply of wine could be turned into biofuels, and this is certainly something that the nation can look to in the future. It is possible, but the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 is not just about the legislation amending two acts but also, very much at the heart and core of this, about this federal Labor government's water policy. If you go and ask any of those irrigators or any of those grape growers in the Riverina—the old part of the Riverina that I once represented and elsewhere—they will tell you that, but for poor water policy, they would be growing more food for this nation and for this nation's exports.

The member for Nicholls has just entered the chamber. He, like me, understands how keenly water policy is felt in our electorates. He represents Shepparton and many other fine food-producing areas besides. If you take his electorate and the older parts of the Riverina that were in the Riverina up until 2016—why they're not still is a matter for the Australian Electoral Commission; it's the true geographical and every other definition and meaning of the Riverina, that area Narrandera west, with Narrandera being the gateway to the Riverina, taking in Coleambally, Leeton, Griffith, Deniliquin, Finley and Tocumwal, and I could go on and on—those people are fine Australians.

They went there just after World War 1. They turned what John Oxley, the explorer, described as a 'wilderness that people would never look twice at' as far as being a place to live—'inhospitable', I think, he called it—into a garden of Eden. They were told to go out there with soldier settlements. They were given a bare block with stones and pretty poor soil. Then Sir Samuel McCaughey came along. Burrinjuck Dam was built, and Snowy Hydro was built later—for irrigation, not necessarily hydroelectricity. They converted that area, that wilderness, into something very special.

What do we do in return? What do we do as legislators? We say: we're not going to provide you with the water. We're going to buy that water back, and, in turn, we're going to flush it down the mouth of the Murray. Never mind the grape growers, never mind the wine producers, never mind the rice growers. Never mind those people who grow the world's finest fruit and vegetables. The same is happening in Nicholls. The same is happening in that outstanding member's electorate. We're not going to continue to cop it. We are not. Somebody has to make a stand. Our irrigators have, but they are so tired and so bogged down with water legislation, with changes to the act and all the rest, and they get very weary when, once again, they get a water minister—particularly a Labor minister—suggesting that there's going to be another buyback. Buybacks are Labor lazy policy. Labor and lazy are interchangeable because they mean the same thing.

There is a proposal before this nation to buy another 100 gigalitres out to complete the 450 gigalitres of water that then prime minister Julia Gillard promised on the banks of Goolwa in 2012. We've just seen 86 gigalitres taken out of the Murray-Darling Basin system. Eighty-six gigalitres is the equivalent of 34,400 Olympic sized swimming pools taken out of farm production, taken away from grape growers. Labor, bureaucrats and anybody else who cares to think that this policy is good will say, 'Well, they get paid for it; they get a fair price for it.' So they do. Many of them are dead stressed, thanks to the Labor government.

What it means is less local government area production. Griffith City Council will tell you how much their shire production has been devalued by since the Murray-Darling Basin Plan came into play. The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, that organisation, will be asked to account for every drop of water when we get back into government. They already have 72 per cent of the available water in the Murray-Darling system, so there's only 28 per cent left to grow the food and fibre in a huge area of Queensland, the ACT, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. There's only 28 per cent in the Riverland, in the areas that the member for Nicholls represents, in New South Wales, in the northern and southern connected systems, in South-East Queensland and western Queensland too. But most of the recent buyback as part of that 450 gigalitres came out of the southern connected system. It always comes out of the southern connected system. Always. It's the people I represent and, often, the people the member for Nicholls represents who are hit the hardest.

This bill amends two acts. The first is the Wine Australia Act 2013, which will give Wine Australia an explicit function to conduct or arrange grape and wine industry surveys—fair enough—building on the existing National Vintage Survey, to set up an information sharing framework so relevant information can be shared with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and to enable a mandatory code of conduct for wine grape purchases to be made separately under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, intended to commence on 1 January next year. The amendments to the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Act 2024 allow authorised ABARES staff to share levy and charge information, including some personal information, with contractors such as mail houses to improve response rates and data quality for ABARES and agricultural surveys, plus a minor technical fix to the secretary's rule making power.

I note that the member for Kooyong has moved a amendment, seconded by the member for Mackellar. Always be wary when those two—or any of the teals—start putting in their pious amendments. Always be on guard. They were just in the House talking about gambling, and you should have seen the looks they were pulling when the Prime Minister was saying, 'There's nothing wrong with having a bet,' in question time today. They've had their say about vaping and smoking, and they like to have their say about everything. I mean, seriously. If we followed the teals' way, we wouldn't be able to have a bet. We wouldn't be able to have a drink. In a liberal democracy, those who choose to smoke—I don't—wouldn't be able to have a smoke. They are just anti everything most Australians like to do.

Dan Repacholi (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear 'hear, hear' from the member for Hunter. But a sensible balance has to be reached. There has to be. And we as legislators can't just keep banging Australians on the head and forcing more regulation on them. We as legislators also need to be reminded often of the role that has been played, is being played and will continue to be played by those people who don't wear suits, who work the land, who roll their sleeves up, who don't mind getting dirt under their fingernails, who actually grow our food to help this nation and many others. If they choose to grow grapes, almonds, fruit, vegetables, whatever the case might be—whether it's west of Narrandera or whether it's in some of the grape growing areas and wine producing areas in the Riverina electorate I now represent including: Tumbarumba; Hilltops, which is centred on Young; Gundagai; and Cowra as well as Murrumbateman and the Yass Valley—then we should be applauding them and doing everything we can to help those people.

There's nothing wrong with people having a tipple. There's nothing wrong with people getting in the car and driving out of the nation's capital, going to one of those little cellar door wineries, having a taste on the weekend and having a good time, maybe even having a bet at the Yass Picnic Races if they want to. It's totally unhealthy, but if they choose to have a smoke, well, so be it. They should be able to without the teal's telling us, 'Oh no'. Smack on the wrist. 'You can't do that.' You can't do that? Goodness gracious. What's Australia coming to?

Tumbarumba has around 300 hectares under vine, about 20 family owned vineyards and an annual crush of roughly 3,000 tonnes. Tumbarumba is known for its world-class, internationally acclaimed chardonnay and pinot noir. The Gundagai and Hilltops areas produce shiraz, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay, and it's good, and we applaud them. Murrumbateman and the Yass Valley have a number of globally recognised brands and local hidden gems. Shiraz, riesling and cab sav are the main varieties, with proud brands of Clonakilla—who wouldn't like a glass of that right now?—Helm and Eden Road located in the Riverina boundaries that I now proudly represent. Wagga Wagga—of course, my hometown—is also home to the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre at Charles Sturt University. Plus, CSU has its own commercial winery and offers a wine science degree.

But, as I said at the outset, high water prices and the lack of availability of water are huge problems for the wine sector. They are. These are permanent plantings that need a secure and stable water supply. Can we have confidence, member for Nicholls, in the Labor government providing that? I think not.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) | Link to this | Hansard source

None whatsoever.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

None whatsoever, he says. And he's right. And there's very little that the member for Nicholls and I disagree on. I don't think there's quite anything that we disagree on. Certainly, when it comes to making available the water for our wine growers, for our great producers and for our irrigators and farmers in general, we should be doing everything in our power as legislators to make the water available, to make their futures possible. If we don't, we're going to suffer as a result, and we'll have to rely on imported products to stock up. And that would be to our eternal shame.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Riverina for his comments in relation to the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. His constituents—and the ones he has represented over the years before there were boundary changes—are suffering in a similar way to my constituents, my communities, member for Mallee, because of the disastrous water policies of the Labor government. I'm speaking in support of this bill because I'm very supportive of it, and the coalition is supportive of it. It's sensible, it's proportionate, and it does what needs to be done.

But I want to make this point, too. A person could read this bill from end to end—the schedules, the explanatory memorandum, every clause—and they would come away not knowing about the significant pressures that the wine industry is facing at the moment. There's nothing about how a grower at Nagambie can't find a buyer for his fruit this year. There's nothing about the family at Echuca, growing wine grapes, who can't afford to keep farming but can't afford to stop. And there's nothing about the 262 million litres of wine sitting in tanks across this country that nobody can sell.

Whilst I'm supportive of this bill, the Albanese government is not going far enough to assist an industry that is on its knees. In fact, some of what they're doing is actively making the situation worse, and irrigation water is a big part of this. The member for Riverina talks about Labor's buybacks and the 450 gigalitres that were supposed to be subject to a socioeconomic neutrality test, which the previous and some Labor states as well insisted upon. Socioeconomic neutrality means the socioeconomic effects—the effect on the society, the effect on the economy—must be neutral. The socioeconomic effect of these water buybacks is not neutral. It is significantly negative. These purchases should never have gone ahead. The previous minister in the last parliament was disastrous on this, and the current minister, Senator Watt, isn't any better. They're coming in and buying all of this water out of the most productive irrigation regions of our nation, including the irrigation regions that grow a large proportion of Australia's wine grapes now. It's the egregiousness of taking this water away from these communities that rely on the produce, and, as has been pointed out many times, it's not just about the produce that's grown.

Let's take wine grapes. It's not just about what a wine grower gets paid for the grapes that he or she has irrigated. When those wine grapes go to the winery, there are a whole swag of people employed in that process. When that becomes a bottle of wine, there are a whole host of people who are involved in the marketing, the sale and the export of that product. The value of the megalitre of water that grew the crop expands massively, and it's really important for Australia's economy. So taking it away and putting it into an environmental account that sits somewhere in Hume or Eildon and can't be used is not only economic vandalism; it's just silly.

I have one more thing about this, and the Weekly Times reported on this today. When the Albanese government go in and buy this water, they are paying a huge premium for it. They're not getting it at market value. So the government go in to buy this water on behalf of you, the Australian taxpayer. A high-reliability water share in the Goulburn system of the GMID is approximately $4,000. The Albanese government are going in and paying $4,800 for it. So they're not getting good value. They're paying a massive premium. In many cases, because of the way that certain companies have managed to arbitrage this system, the companies that have sold all this water to the Albanese government for $4,800 or whatever it is—that's what's been reported in the Weekly Times today—go back into the market and buy it from someone else for $4,000 to stock up their portfolios again. So the taxpayer ends up paying much more than they ever should have.

In relation to this bill—it's largely administrative, but I'm supportive of it. The bill has two schedules. Schedule 1 amends the Wine Australia Act and gives Wine Australia an explicit function to conduct industry surveys. That builds on the National Vintage Survey, and there's a framework that Wine Australia can establish to share relevant information with the ACCC. Schedule 2 amends the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Act to allow ABARES to share levy payer contact details with authorised third-party contractors so that agricultural survey participation improves. So there's no financial impact of this on the budget. It doesn't change the levies, who pays them or how they are calculated, but it does lay the groundwork for a mandatory code of conduct, and we do need a mandatory code of conduct in this industry. We need a fair playing field between large producers—I'm not demonising them; they do a great job—and the wine growers, who are trying to use what little irrigation water the Albanese government has left in the system to grow a really good quality product that is respected the world over.

The wine industry is really hurting at the moment. I drive around the electorate of Nicholls, and I have the wine region of Dookie and part of the wine region of Heathcote, which is renowned for its shiraz. It's got a magnificent hillside which has soils and a climate that produce a shiraz that is known far and wide across the world. I also have the Nagambie region, which has Tahbilk and Mitchelton. So there are great quality wines and there is great history. I was actually an agronomist before I came to parliament. I did soil testing, I did advice on nutrition and I did advice on managing those grapevines. Now as a member of parliament I drive around and see excavators pulling those vines out of the ground and pulling the pine posts out. Just thinking about the work that went into all of that is really quite heartbreaking.

I implore the Albanese government to look at whether there are ways we can manage what is a very difficult transition for an industry, and most of it's not their fault. The China tariff thing is not their fault. I agree there was a coalition government at the time, which was well before I was in parliament. I am critical that some of the managed investment tax laws meant that there was too much of a boom in the wine plantation in the early 2000s, and I think that has created some issues. But the reality is there are people, agriculturalists, who have tried their hardest to produce a great-quality product that we're trying to export and find new export markets for and send around Australia and send around the world, and they are struggling to survive.

There's a huge amount of wine, both red and white, that is just sitting in tanks around Australia. Unless we can find something to do with that wine—maybe it's not drinkable, but we need to work together to try and find something to do with it so that that tank space becomes empty and it can be filled with a product that is saleable—then the situation's not going to get better and the pain is going to be huge. So, whilst I accept that this bill is something that is a positive step and I support the Albanese government in bringing it forward, I implore them to do more to help this industry.

We sit in question time, and there are people from different political persuasions. The Albanese government likes to talk a lot about helping people like aged-care workers and childcare workers, and that's okay. That's fair enough. They're workers in the system. These people who run small businesses are workers in the system too. They've had an industry fall apart around them and they're not asking for massive handouts, but they are asking for a strategic plan and some assistance to come in and try and right the ship that is the Australian wine industry at the moment. I think there are a lot of things we could do to do that. That's really important, and I implore the Albanese government to stop being so ideological when it comes to irrigation water and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

This is one of those issues that I've watched from outside the parliament because I've been in incredibly involved in it in the Goulburn Valley and the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District. It's one of those things where common sense keeps evaporating and evaporating; pardon the pun. There is no reason to be taking more irrigation water out of the GMID, out of the southern connected basin or out of the northern Murray-Darling Basin because there's a limit to which the people who use that environmental water can use it. One of those organisations is the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority. It is a wonderful organisation that is very interested and very committed to making sure that environmental water gets used as well as it can be used to give us environmental outcomes. Carl Walters is the CEO of that organisation. He has said, 'I wish the government would just stop buying environmental water because we can't use what we've already got.'

So what's happening is all this water is sitting up there in Hume or Eildon and taking up space. Irrigation—the price volatility has massively risen because the government's taken so much out of the consumptive pool. This has put pressure on a lot of industries, but it's put a lot of pressure on the wine-grape-growing industry, and all for what? If we were seeing these massive increases in environmental outcomes from the megalitres that have been bought back, there might be an argument, but we're not seeing any purpose to take any more water out of these systems.

I was born on the Goulburn River and grew up there and I've watched its environment ebb and flow. I've watched people use environmental water to try to turn it into a channel to artificially push water down to South Australia. When you love as an industry as much as I do irrigated agriculture and you see what used to be these incredibly productive dairy industries, as well as peaches, wine grapes and apples, and—in relation to the wine industry particularly—you see an excavator go in and start ripping those vines and those posts out and piling them up for a bonfire, it's really heartbreaking.

I think we can do better. I'm supportive of this bill. It's just a start, though. Agriculture is important to this country. Irrigated agriculture is essential. The communities of the Murray-Darling Basin are worth fighting for and worth appreciating, and policies that damage them deserve our strongest condemnation. I condemn these policies of taking more irrigation water out of our beautiful Murray-Darling Basin. I hope that we can all work together to try and right the ship that is the wine industry and get it back to a sustainable footing, but that is going to take some assistance. This bill helps, but it's nowhere near enough.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank members of this place for their thoughtful contributions and for speaking on the Wine and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. I also thank them for their acknowledgement of the extraordinary contribution that Australian farmers and fishers and foresters make to our nation. I think that all of the speeches acknowledged our farmers and our grape growers around the country and the work that they do, and this bill is really part of our support for the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors.

The grape and wine sector does make a very valuable contribution to regional communities as well as to our Australian economy. Our government is committed to supporting the sector's profitability, its productivity and its resilience, and we've now provided more than $95 million in support since July 2022 to help strengthen the long-term viability of Australian grape growers and winemakers. The amendments to the Wine Australia Act 2013—the wine act—would provide Wine Australia with the function to conduct or arrange surveys of the grape or wine industry to support the operation of the wine act or the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. This supports implementation of the proposed mandatory code of conduct for wine grape purchases. The amendments to the wine act would also establish an information management framework that provides for the authorised use and disclosure of information obtained or generated under the act.

These amendments will modernise and strengthen the wine act while ensuring there are appropriate safeguards for protected information. The amendments to the Primary Industries Levies and Charges Collection Act 2024—the collection act—would enable the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, known as ABARES, within the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, to disclose certain relevant levy/charge payer information to third parties to perform its functions, including research and data analysis. In particular, the amendments would allow ABARES to disclose relevant and targeted levy/charge payer information to third-party mail-house companies to enable ABARES to continue to conduct agricultural surveys. The bill would also make a technical change to the rule-making power in the collection act to ensure that the power operates as intended, consistent with other specific rule-making powers in the act. These changes will strengthen the ability of Wine Australia and ABARES to continue their important research work and continue strengthening the industry into the future.

I will also take this opportunity to thank the member for Ryan for her contribution but to indicate to her that the government is not supportive of her second reading amendment. I understand the reasons behind it, and I understand her passion in relation to volumetric tax on alcohols, but I don't think that this is the appropriate bill, time or place to have that discussion, so the government will be opposing the second reading amendment. Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment

Federation Chamber adjourned at 18:41