Monday 23 June 2008 - House of Representatives - Hansard 23/06/2008 (PDF - 1.57Mb)

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The SPEAKER (Mr H Jenkins)— The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Mr Burke (Watson—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry)— Mr Speaker, I move that the amendments be considered immediately.

The SPEAKER (Mr H Jenkins)— The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The question is that the amendments be considered immediately. All those of that opinion say aye, the contrary no, I think the ayes have it. I understand that it is the wish of the House to consider the amendments together. There being no objection I will allow that course of action. Minister.

(from Hansard)

Mr BURKE (Watson—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) (12.27 pm)—
I move: That the amendments be agreed to. It would be considered an outrageous thing to hear in this House, but it was actually interesting watching the Senate on Thursday night. When watching the Senate on Thursday night we saw a whole lot of things that I certainly never expected to see. The Liberal Party had indicated through the Leader of the Opposition in this House a number of amendments they were going to move. The key amendment was to remove access provisions across the board that were contained in this legislation. That amendment, notwithstanding having been raised by the Leader of the Opposition in this House as being critical to the amendments that would be moved by the opposition, was never moved. There were a number of amendments moved, though, and, for reasons which will become clear as I speak, the government are in a position to respond positively to each of them.

There was a change to the objects clause in the Wheat Export Marketing Bill 2008 which changed the obligation from being ‘responsive’ to growers to ‘advances’ the needs of growers. We have accepted that. Regarding the review date, there was some discussion where the government suggested to the opposition that it might have made more sense to have a later review date so that there were two harvests, so that the access provisions under this bill were able to be taken into account. If they were able to be taken into account that would make the review more worth while, but the Liberal Party were determined that the start date should be 1 January 2010. In the interests of having a constructive approach in the other place, the amendment was accepted. There was also a particular issue regarding transport and trying to make sure that state governments did not try to impose transport monopolies on the way grain is transported around the country. That amendment was put by the opposition and agreed to.

The bit that got really interesting, though, was an amendment about individuals. This was raised by the Liberal Party and was that any individual grower should be able to export their own wheat without any regulation on them whatsoever. You could describe this amendment as being the total deregulation of the wheat industry. The National Party voted for it. In the Senate on Thursday night the Liberal Party put an amendment forward that amounted to the total deregulation of the wheat industry—not moving from having a single desk to having the regulated but competitive system that the government is proposing but actually allowing every single grower the right to export their own wheat wherever they want and in whatever quantity they want, completely outside any international pool. The government was opposed to that amendment. We supported the system that we put forward. The Liberal Party put forward a system of total deregulation and the National Party on Thursday night voted for it.

Interestingly, when you go to the reasons they gave, the most telling comment came after Senator Minchin had described the fact that he believed this bill would be unacceptable to the government and said: So I suspect we will be talking about this bill once more next week ... To that, Senator Joyce said: I understand completely the tactics. What would possess the National Party to decide on Thursday night that they would support the total deregulation of the wheat industry?

Mr Bidgood—Spell it out!

Mr BURKE—I will spell it out—I respond to the interjection favourably— because it is an easy thing to spell out. You spell it this way: A-W-B. There was a late request that was going through the corridors of this house with respect to having a particular set of rules that would cause the one port in Melbourne, part owned by AWB, to have a set of rules different from those that would apply to every other port in the nation. AWB was never named in the debate—no, no, no. It kept being referred to as the ‘joint venture matter’. AWB sort of became the Voldemort of the Senate debate on Thursday night: everyone knows what you are talking about but you dare not speak its name. It was said by Senator Minchin in these terms:

In the meantime, the government will have the opportunity to further consider its position with respect to the joint venture matter.

(Extension of time granted) An incident having occurred in the gallery—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke)—The people in the gallery will please respect the House.

Mr BURKE—Senator Minchin said: In the meantime, the government will have the opportunity to further consider its position with respect to the joint venture matter. But certainly at this stage, it is the position of Liberal senators that we concur with the remarks of Senator Sherry on that matter.

So, to try to get the special deal for AWB, amendments were put forward, and so determined were each of the coalition parties to make sure they could delay the legislation that we saw the National Party on Thursday night vote for the total deregulation of the wheat industry.

As it happens, they made a mess of their own amendment that they put forward for the total deregulation of the wheat industry. I will start a step back from that. The objections and the barriers to individuals exporting their own wheat directly occurred in two places: one, in the principal bill, the Wheat Export Marketing Bill 2008 and, secondly, under the Wheat Export Marketing (Repeal and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2008, which had an amendment to some of the regulations contained under the Customs Act. The Senate amended the first bill but never read the second bill. So the House is in a situation now where, because there are no amendments to the second bill, it is impossible and not open to us to send those bills back to be corrected because one of them has now been approved in identical forms by both houses. That option is not open to the parliament now.

The amendments were done in a lazy fashion by the opposition when they went for total deregulation. The attempts by both coalition parties to completely deregulate the wheat industry have fallen over, thankfully, because the one thing standing between protecting growers from total deregulation and it happening was competence from coalition senators in the other place. That did not happen and therefore we have the protection. There was not competence; we have the protection that the bill before us now cannot provide for individuals to export their own wheat because the second amendment to the other bill was never carried.

These decisions and recommendations from the government have to be made on one question, and one question only—not on the basis of what tactical games the opposition tried to play, not on the basis of how bizarre it was to see National Party senators voting for total deregulation, but on the basis of: does the legislation before the House match government policy? And the answer to that is yes. What we have before us is legislation which ends the AWB monopoly on exports. It includes amendment to the objects clause, the review date and to transport systems which are acceptable to the government. What it has actually done in a legal sense with respect to individuals is take away any barrier to individuals exporting their own wheat in the principal legislation but left a regulation in place, which could conceivably be changed by a minister in the years to come, should a minister choose to make that change—I certainly will not be choosing to—to allow individuals to export their own wheat directly, by removing a customs prohibition.

With that in mind, the legislation which we have before the House accords with the policies of the government. The government is not interested in providing a special deal on a commercial matter to a particular company exporting wheat. With that in mind, I commend the motion to the House, which is that the amendments be agreed to. That takes us into a new era of wheat export marketing.