|
senate vote 2017-10-18#3
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2018-01-20 17:25:25
|
Title
Description
<p class="speaker">Carol Brown</p><p>I now move opposition amendment (5):</p><p class="italic">(5) Clause 12, page 11 (lines 20 and 21), omit "responsible Ministers may give a written direction to the Corporation about", substitute "rules must provide for".</p>- The majority voted against the following [motion](http://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2017-10-18.126.1):
- > *(5) Clause 12, page 11 (lines 20 and 21), omit “responsible Ministers may give a written direction to the Corporation about”, substitute “rules must provide for”.*
- Labor Senator [Carol Brown](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/tasmania/carol_brown) explained that:
- > *This amendment removes the minister's being able to direct where the corporation must be located. Instead, the rules must provide for where the corporation is to be located.*
- ### What does this bill do?
- The [bill](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5906) was introduced to create a Regional Investment Corporation to administer farm business loans and financial assistance granted to states and territories. Read more about it in the [bills digest](https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd1718a/18bd013).
<p>This amendment removes the minister's being able to direct where the corporation must be located. Instead, the rules must provide for where the corporation is to be located.</p><p>Minister Ruston earlier referenced the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and made an implication that there is no difference between how that corporation was established and how the RIC is established. Minister Ruston should familiarise herself with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act. It certainly does not have a clause whereby the responsible minister can direct where the corporation is to be located.</p><p>To ensure the proper, efficient and effective performance of the corporation, the board should be allowed to make decisions as to where best the corporation will function. Minister Ruston has provided no detailed information about what process was undertaken to determine that Orange is the best location for the corporation and whether any other regional centre was considered before Orange was selected. Concerns have been raised by stakeholders that the location of the RIC has been unilaterally decided without any apparent economic analysis or even a discussion with the agricultural industry stakeholders, and this in turn has highlighted another dimension of the non-commercial nature of the corporation.</p><p>The location of the corporation should not be decided by the minister of the day. The location should be decided on the grounds of where it can best do its job, and this decision should be made by the board of the RIC.</p> <p class="speaker">Anne Ruston</p><p>Firstly, can I just put on the record that I'm not entirely sure that I ever said that the CEFC was told where it was to be located.</p><p>The Australian government, as I have said time and time again, has a very strong commitment to rural and regional Australia. Our decentralisation policy will certainly be supported by the corporation being located in Orange, New South Wales. Orange is an extraordinarily important agricultural hub, and we believe that this is an appropriate place for the RIC to be located. Meetings have been held with a number of entities, which I have previously put on the public record as part of this debate, which were consulted about the operational arrangements of the organisation, so there certainly has been consultation.</p><p>In essence, this is absolutely consistent with our current policy. It's in line with the exemptions under the Legislation (Exemptions and Other Matters) Regulation that a direction is not a legislative instrument and therefore is not disallowable. This approach also provides certainty to the board about where the corporation will be located and will allow it to have focus on having the corporation fully operational by July 2018.</p> <p class="speaker">Janet Rice</p><p>The Greens will be supporting this amendment from Labor. The fact that the board is being directed to establish its headquarters in Orange underlines the whole rationale behind so much of this legislation. It is giving power without any assessment process, without any objective process. It gives the minister the power to direct the board, quite inappropriately.</p><p>Orange may well be the best place for the headquarters of such a corporation, but we don't know. There is no process that's been undertaken to determine that, just like with the APVMA, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. Suddenly Minister Joyce plucked Armidale out of the air and said, 'It's going to be there,' with no justification. We saw in the cost-benefit analysis that was done that in fact there was a negative benefit in establishing the headquarters of the APVMA in Armidale.</p><p>Here we've got a similar situation. It is blatant pork-barrelling. That's all it is. Without parliamentary oversight and without any process, we have a situation of putting far too much power in the hands of the executive. This might be the way the government wants to do business, but it is not good governance. It is not good, transparent, accountable, evidence-based legislation and governing. Supporting this amendment, at least, is one tiny thing that would improve this legislation. The fact that the government is opposing this amendment bells the cat. It shows so much of what the purpose of this legislation is based on.</p> <p class="speaker">Cory Bernardi</p><p>Surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with Senator Rice. I ask the minister: are you able to confirm that the electorates and regional centres that were talked about are where the National Party is under extreme political threat by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party?</p> <p class="speaker">Anne Ruston</p><p>Senator Bernardi, what I can confirm for you today is that Orange is a thriving regional community. It is the hub of much of the agricultural bureaucratic infrastructure for the New South Wales agriculture department. Having the Regional Investment Corporation located in Orange has certainly received wide support from the community. As I responded to Senator Brown, Orange is a regional community and this government supports the development and growth of our regional economies.</p> <p class="speaker">Cory Bernardi</p><p>I can confirm for you—just in case you were in any doubt—that it is the heart of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and their supporters, which, of course, is playing into the concerns of the National Party. In this debate in this place, I was reminded very much of an event that happened under a former minister, Ros Kelly, with regard to the awarding of grants, where they were mapped out, effectively, on a whiteboard. Are you able to confirm that a whiteboard and a similar process will be used to determine where these grants should be given in the event of propping up marginal seats?</p> <p class="speaker">Anne Ruston</p><p>Senator Bernardi, at the risk of suggesting you're being tricky, I can assure you that all the appropriate processes that are afforded to a government instrumentality will apply to the Regional Investment Corporation and that the appropriate levels of governance, accountability, transparency and notification will occur in line with such acts as the PGPA Act and all of the requirements that will be issued as part of the operating mandate of this organisation.</p> <p class="speaker">Cory Bernardi</p><p>Thank you, Minister. I'm heartened by your reassurance that all the appropriate probity and accountability of government will be brought to bear in many of these grants. But what you've said flies in stark contrast to what Senator Rice has been saying—which has resonated with me, quite frankly—which is that there is no real, formal approval process. The board can make some suggestions which the minister can ignore and establish new classes of grants and dispense them wherever they like. For example, they could, in the interests of equality, not only give them to Armidale and Orange but they might slot it into Renmark for no particular reason—maybe to support the good work of a senator down there, or something like that. It doesn't seem as if there is any rationale or criteria attached to where these grants can go apart from the whims of the minister at the time.</p><p>Now, we may have confidence in the minister—some may not, currently—but no-one knows who is going to be the minister next. To place such discretion in the hands of any one individual without the checks and balances that accrue from the parliament—and I do note that the government has voted against the disallowance of these grants, these potential boondoggles, these potential whiteboard/sports rorts, to coin a term; these could be ag rorts in a future life. These are normal checks and balances that accompany the responsibilities and roles of government.</p><p>Further, how does something like this get through the cabinet without these checks and balances? I know you are not in cabinet, Minister. I think you've been given a hospital pass here in some respects, and I'm sorry for that, but, in effect, this doesn't seem even to have gone through the normal cursory examinations and consultation attached to cabinet probity. It just seems as if it's been cooked up on the whim of one or two individuals in order to give them some discretion to prop up political threats, and that really concerns me. I don't think it's the right approach. It overturns the principles of federation. As I said, it overturns some of the concerns raised on the constitutionality by the Productivity Commission. It overturns the expectation of appropriate consultation and examination by the parliament and the ability to say, 'This is absolutely wrong.' It has all the hallmarks of a scheme that is going to be rorted. It may be well intended, but these are serious concerns. Minister, whilst you have assured us of these probities, I still haven't heard an effective response to Senator Rice's concerns that, in effect, this is just a bag of money that is at ministerial discretion to throw out wherever they like.</p> <p class="speaker">Anne Ruston</p><p>There are a number of points that I'll try and clarify from the comments that you have just made. First of all, to put this on the record: Orange has a series of quite unique characteristics that make it a particularly ideal location in terms of creating a critical mass of infrastructure in relation to agriculture in a regional community. I'm assuming you are not suggesting for a minute that we shouldn't be decentralising and giving support to the regional communities around Australia, including the one in which I live. But, at the moment, Paraway Pastoral, the New South Wales RIA, the New South Wales DPI and NAB Business Banking all have their headquarters in Orange. The creation of a regional centre of excellence in Orange is something that the government believes is a very worthy and worthwhile application of its activities.</p><p>There were a number of reasons why Orange was identified as being an entirely suitable location for the RIC to go to. It's also worth pointing out that all the way through here we have interspersed the word 'loans' with the word 'grants'. I'd like to put on the record and make sure it is very clear that we are referring to loans and not grants.</p> <p class="speaker">Carol Brown</p><p>I would just like to follow on from Senator Bernardi's contribution because the minister in her response made it no clearer to the chamber what the process was that was undertaken to determine Orange as the location for the RIC. There was no indication of whether there were any other locations—and there are many locations around Australia that have vibrant farming communities. Unless the minister can tell us now what the process was and what, if any, other locations were considered, the only thing that we in this chamber can safely assume is that this is about pork-barrelling by Mr Joyce and a political fix for the National Party. That is the only conclusion that we can come to, because the minister has failed to tell this chamber exactly what the process was.</p><p>We've seen this all before under Mr Joyce. We saw it with the siting of the APVMA in Armidale, and that has not gone well. We've seen expert people leave that organisation. We have seen the backlog of work that hasn't been able to be undertaken because of the concern and uncertainty that Mr Joyce has caused. So it is vital in this committee stage that the minister tells this chamber quite clearly what process was undertaken to select Orange as the location for the commission.</p> <p class="speaker">Anne Ruston</p><p>There are two things here. One is that I think we need to be very careful that you don't make a quantum leap of faith to suggest that the decision of the government to pursue its decentralisation targets and policy to move a number of agencies out of capital cities and into regional communities, where they're closer to the people that they represent, has been the cause of what has been a long-term systemic underperformance of the APVMA. I think we just need to be very careful that you don't accuse something of being the cause of something that it actually wasn't.</p><p>However, I don't know how many times I have to reiterate every single indicator as to why Orange would be a very suitable place for the location of this important agricultural institution. Yesterday afternoon, I think, I made the point that it is a decision of government. The government has exercised its right in making that decision, but in doing so it has provided, ad nauseam, a number of different reasons why it believes Orange is an extraordinarily suitable place for this organisation. As a rural and regional member of this parliament, I can assure you that I could go and speak to every one of my colleagues and they would all have somewhere in their electorates where they would like to have a government agency located. However, in doing so, everybody still has to demonstrate that it is a suitable place and an appropriate place and that there are strong reasons for the location of any government instrumentality in any area, rural or metropolitan. Quite clearly, Orange has a whole heap of factors and a whole heap of attributes that are attractive for the location of this instrumentality. I can go through them all again with you, but, in the interests of time, I will allow you to re-read <i>Hansard</i> to be informed of them.</p> <p class="speaker">Cory Bernardi</p><p>Thank you, Minister. I find this very interesting and very enlightening because, essentially, you've said that there are a number of criteria from which the government has chosen this location, and you've put that on the record. Surely, Orange was not the only candidate. So my question, which builds upon Senator Brown's question, is: how many local council areas were approached about their interest in having the RIC housed within their regions? How many different centres were considered in the shortlist by government? On what criteria, specifically, that weren't demonstrable in other candidates was Orange chosen as the final location?</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
|