Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Hansard source

The Export Control Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2020 amends the Export Control Act and is designed to support the implementation of the new export control framework. The amendment seeks to clarify the circumstances where a fit and proper person test is required for an application to vary registration of an establishment or to approve an alteration of an establishment. The amendment also expands the discretion of the secretary with respect to export permits. There is no doubt that Australia's previous legislative framework for agricultural production and certification of exports was overly complex—in fact, there were 17 acts. However, farmers and this parliament must remember that the act we are seeking to amend here today was initially introduced to the House on 7 December 2017, but lapsed. The act did not pass until March 2020.

The failure to prioritise reforming the agricultural export framework is indicative of this government's attitude to farmers. They claim they are the government for farmers, but they are leaving our primary producers behind. Labor is glad that the government has finally decided to take steps to assist farmers with gaining and maintaining access to markets. However, farmers have been waiting for seven years for this government to do something for them. The minister has claimed that the new export framework is designed to ensure that Australia has appropriate regulatory settings to enable exports to grow and to help drive productivity and increase returns at the farm gate. But if the minister really cared about supporting the growth of agricultural exports and increasing productivity, he would not have abandoned farmers during this pandemic or waited three years to deliver this—for want of a better word—better framework.

Regional communities and our farmers have experienced extreme droughts. They've experienced floods. They've experienced bushfires and now a global pandemic. And if all that weren't enough, Australian agriculture's most high-volume and high-value market is under serious threat. Australian agricultural producers and exporters must be wondering: where are these new markets that Mr Littleproud promised? The answer is: Mr Littleproud doesn't know, because he hasn't put in the work. After three years of failing to legislate this new framework, it is not good enough that, when faced with the loss of high-volume and high-value markets, Mr Littleproud wiped his hands clean of the issue and told producers it wasn't his problem. To add insult to injury, despite the myriad challenges facing the agricultural sector, all this minister has to offer to deliver a $100 billion agricultural sector is a few dot points on a page. Farmers need and deserve more than a few dot points on a media release and obfuscation of responsibility. Farmers need the Liberal-National government to actually deliver outcomes, not just say they will. Mr Littleproud has been absent throughout this pandemic. He has refused to work with states to deliver the agricultural workers the sector so desperate needs. All this minister has managed to do is to pull together a workers' code that couldn't pass muster with chief health officers, and then blame the states when it didn't work.

Talk is extraordinarily cheap, and our farmers are suffering. Farmers deserve a government that will prioritise legislation designed to support the sector's growth. Labor supports growing agriculture to $100 billion by 2030, but we need a comprehensive plan to get there. A few dot points on a media release simply isn't good enough.