CRITICS are continuing calls for the federal Coalition to reverse its decision to relocate the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) from Canberra to Armidale in Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s New England electorate.
Mr Joyce - also the Agriculture and Water Resources Minister - came under increased pressure last week for the national farm chemical regulator’s forced move to Armidale in northern NSW, as CEO Kareena Arthy revealed she’d quit and would not be shifting to the Authority’s new home base.
The APVMA refused to confirm or deny speculation that Chief Operating Officer Stefanie Janiec would replace Ms Arthy as its interim CEO.
“The future leadership of the APVMA is a matter for the Deputy Prime Minister,” a spokesperson said.
But the Australian Greens demanded Mr Joyce’s “ill-advised” move of the APVMA to his home electorate should be stopped, given the loss of the agency’s “highly respected” CEO and a recent Productivity Commission report “slamming the proposal as costly and ineffective”.
Australian Greens agriculture and rural affairs spokesperson Janet Rice said “Barnaby’s blatant pork-barrelling has led to disarray at the AVPMA and the move should be scrapped immediately”.
“The move has prompted a staff exodus and severely affected the Agency’s ability to do its critical job of protecting people, animals, crops, the environment and trade,” she said.
“We’re seeing an irreplaceable loss of experience at the agency and now its chief executive’s resignation will also mean a huge loss in organisational knowledge and experience.”
Senator Rice said the business case for the proposed relocation wasn’t even completed until after Mr Joyce had already made the decision.
She said that independent cost-benefit analysis actually showed that the move would cost the community $23 million more than it delivers.
“This idea is one of Barnaby’s biggest duds yet,” she said.
“He has managed to waste taxpayer money, hamstring a critically important government Agency and potentially hit the agricultural community for up to $193m a year, according to the government-commissioned cost benefit and risk analysis.
“The Nationals are increasingly irrelevant to their constituency and this move shows they’re much more interested in clawing back votes from One Nation than they are in a sustainable future for Australia’s food-growing regions.”
However, Mr Joyce remained defiant last week saying the APVMA move was going ahead despite industry’s opposition, given it was a final decision by the federal cabinet.
He also said a “vision” for the nation would guide any decisions on an expanded push via cabinet to look at the criteria to decentralise more government agencies rather than purely relying on the contents of any cost-benefit analysis.
A Senate inquiry has also been set-up to look at the government order underpinning the Coalition’s decentralisation policy and its application to the APVMA relocation.
CropLife Australia CEO Matthew Cossey told the inquiry’s recent hearing in Canberra his group was concerned about the cost and funding of the APVMA relocation.
He said the Ernst & Young cost-benefit analysis report highlighted a transitional funding cost of $34.7m to relocate the APVMA to Armidale over the first four years – but the government was only providing $25.6m.
“We have serious concerns regarding this funding shortfall,” he said.
“The relocation of the APVMA should not come at the cost of the Australian plant science industry or the national farming sector.
“In addition, any cost caused by the inevitable delays to product registrations should be a matter that is given consideration by the government and should not be borne by product registrants.”
Mr Cossey said he was “surprised” about the actual cost impact on the farming sector as a result of relocating the APVMA, as identified in the cost-benefit analysis.
“Those numbers of up to $193m a year off crop production for every year delay in a registration is why an efficient regulator is so crucial and why we have such concerns about the disruption of a relocation,” he said.
Labor Shadow Agriculture Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said Ms Arthy’s departure was “somewhat devastating”.
“People have been jumping ship there for many months now - in fact the APVMA has now lost up to half of its workforce,” he told media last week.
“The Authority was struggling a couple of years ago and (Ms Arthy) turned the ship around and has done a marvellous job.
“She is highly regarded and respected by the various industries that work with the APVMA.
“I fear that her departure will force another round of exits from the organisation.”
Mr Fitzgibbon said the APVMA relocation was “purely a pork barrelling exercise” designed to shore up Mr Joyce’s vote in Armidale.
“The great tragedy is the fact that he is the Agriculture Minister and the sector that is going to be most adversely affected by the demise of the APVMA are farmers,” he said.
“The APVMA of course interacts with the multinational chemical manufacturing companies which seek registration and approval of products.
“They don’t interface with any farmers - there is no logic to moving them to Armidale - it’s about saving Barnaby Joyce’s bacon.”
An internal staff survey at the APVMA has indicated 90 per cent of its specialist regulatory scientists that assess ag-veg chemical applications, don’t want to relocate from Canberra.
But the government has also raised potential reform options via the relocation process, to help fill job vacancies and manage potential risks, like allowing specialist staff to work remotely from home through a digital based strategy.
Chemistry Australia Policy and Regulation director Bernard Lee told the Senate inquiry hearing the APVMA’s capacity to issue emergency permits for chemicals and products needed to combat outbreaks like plague locusts or a mouse plague was also at risk due to the relocation move.
Mr Lee said the APVMA had the capacity to issue emergency permits to deal with issues of significant importance which “basically changes the rules about approval so we can respond quickly”.
“It is very important to understand that agricultural chemicals are not paint - they are not taken off the shelf in Bunnings and applied on any given day of the year,” he said.
“Agricultural chemicals are often used to combat particular pests or an event that takes place at a certain time of the season in a crop cycle.
“A delay on a pre-emergent herbicide or a particular fungicide will have an impact such that a company that has been in the process of doing the R&D, doing all the work necessary to get a product to market and having gone through the APVMA approval process, will not meet the window in which they were aiming to sell and they will lose the market for another 12 months.
“Not only would they lose the market for 12 months; they would also potentially lose the competitive advantage of being the first responder to something - an event or an innovation.
“In the 12-month delay, others can move into the market as well, so the cost is significant.”
Mr Lee said his group was also concerned about the loss of expertise at the APVMA with 90pc of the regulatory scientists saying they would not move.
“No proper-functioning organisation could lose 90 per cent of its expert staff and not have a serious impact upon their ability to do the job,” he said.
“If Telstra lost 90 per cent of the staff that were doing crucial engineering work, I am sure it would impact Telstra's ability to deliver.”
Mr Lee said government money spent on relocating the APVMA could have been better spent by investing in the University of New England – where an agricultural centre of excellence is to be co-located with the farm chemical regulator – to train regulatory scientists.
He said in Australia, there were no regulatory science courses, particularly in the agricultural area.
“We have looked globally and, in the agricultural space, there is not much in terms of regulatory science education in universities,” he said.
“In the United States there is a fair bit of regulatory science education associated with pharmaceuticals, but not other products, be they industrial chemicals, agricultural chemicals or veterinary medicines.
“Our view was that the $28m or however much money is being spent - you could have had a win-win.
“You could have left the APVMA where it was and you could have invested $28m in the University of New England building a centre of excellence on its own.
“In our opinion, it does not need to be co-located with the APVMA to be a centre of excellence.”