Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Xenophon for his question. As I understand it, the answer to the first and second parts of Senator Xenophon's question is: yes, the cost recovery of export fees are from the guidelines from July 2005 and the DAFF cost-recovery process is considered significant. The cost-recovery guidelines are guidelines. I am advised by the department that, in the case of horticultural export program fees and charges, the guidelines were stringently followed. In the horticulture export program the new system corrects a chronic under-collection in previous years and addresses complaints from export certification users about previous service delivery arrangements. It provides a more streamlined export certification arrangement which in time will reduce the cost of export certification. Not all the benefits of the new system are available immediately. That is why I made $6.5 million in transitional funding available to horticultural exporters until 2013-14 to offset the registration charges.

Full cost recovery for export certification services is—and may I remind you and perhaps Senator Ruston as well—the opposition policy from 2005. We are implementing that policy. They committed to it in 2005. They went into the 2007 election with no provision for fee rebate in the forward estimates and no election commitment to deal with that. We continued the rebate in 2009 so that we could find ways to improve service delivery and implement $30 million in efficiencies across all export programs. The export program itself was $127.4 million that we spent to ensure that we could have an export certification program. The exporter the senator refers to will have a rebate applied to his fee for year of $6,730, reducing the fee to $1,800 for 2012-13— (Time expired)