Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pretty shabby reason to push through this legislation, which clearly has not been the subject of any significant consultation with growers. I understand the Grains Council received a letter last night specifying the matters to which the minister referred in his contribution earlier—that is, the extent of the consultation with the peak grower organisation for the wheat industry. One would have to say that that does not inspire confidence in the future of the level of consultation that our growers will receive from the authority—or the Export Wheat Commission, as it will become—and it does not seem to indicate a justification for removing from the legislation a provision that would have guaranteed that consultation. This came without any warning whatsoever to grower organisations—certainly none that have spoken to my office—or to the Grains Council. It is just remarkable. I am pleased to hear the minister say the government takes responsibility for this legislation. It is a shocking thing to have to accept responsibility for the cavalier fashion in which the grower organisation was written out of the legislation. And no-one was consulted about this when the bill was introduced—naturally, they went through it and picked it up, and we were able to discern the changes ourselves. It is remarkable that there was no consultation about that earlier.

It is also remarkable, if we are to accept from a government that talks about employees, industrial action, ballots, proper controls and the like, that in this case the government is not prepared to ballot growers on a provision that will affect every one of their enterprises in terms of the sale on the international market of the commodity they grow. And, of course, we are a major exporter, and many growers depend almost entirely on the international market, particularly those in South Australia and Western Australia. There is also a lot of grain on the eastern states of Australia that is sold into the deregulated domestic markets. In fact, some people suggest that there are a few people running around arguing the same case that the National Party is arguing—that they have not put their grain into the pool for quite some time. But the National Party is content to manipulate the argument, perhaps because it wants to be relevant—perhaps for other reasons; I will let others comment about that. But it is a remarkable situation: no consultation about the bill in any significant sense; no consultation about measures in the bill that wrote out grower organisations.

And now we have the issue of the non-bulk exports, the boxed and bagged exports, in schedule 4. We want to get an understanding of why the government has introduced the so-called quality provision. I thought from the minister’s earlier reply that it is not actually supposed to be a quality assurance provision. I wonder whether the minister could remind us in his next contribution of the actual purpose of this provision, which does not apply to any other export commodity.