Interview with Kirsty Reading, ABC New England North West

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC NEW ENGLAND NORTH WEST
WEDNESDAY, 17 APRIL 2024

SUBJECTS: Albanese Government's Preliminary Response to the Rapid Evaluation into the APVMA; The APVMA headquarters will remain in Armidale.

KIRSTY READING, HOST: Kristy Reading with you this morning. Now the Federal Government will today announce that the headquarters of the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority will stay in Armidale. Federal Agriculture Minister, Murray Watt, has flown into Armidale, where he'll make a formal announcement later this morning.

The future of the chemical regulator has been in doubt following a review by Clayton Utz into the APVMA found it was captured by industry interests and was subject to regular complaints of misconduct. It was also critical of a decision by then Agriculture Minister and New England MP, Barnaby Joyce, to move the APVMA to Armidale in the first place back in 2016. That review saw the resignations of the Board Chair and CEO, and it triggered a rapid evaluation carried out by Ken Matthews into the future of the Authority, including where it should be located.

Federal Agriculture Minister, Murray Watt, is with us ahead of an official event later today, where the details of that review will be released. Good morning, Mr Watt, and thanks for joining us this morning. 

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: Good morning, Kristy, good to be with you.

READING: The APVMA will stay in Armidale. Why did you come to this decision?

WATT: Yeah, that's correct, Kristy, and I think that that will be good news for the Armidale community. Yesterday afternoon I briefed the staff of the APVMA, industry stakeholders, the Mayor of Armidale, and I think it's fair to say that people were somewhat relieved to hear that the APVMA will remain headquartered in Armidale. What we'll be doing today is releasing the report that we commissioned from Ken Matthews to provide us with some recommendations about how to improve the structure and governance of the APVMA.

I think your listeners would be well familiar with some of the problems that have surfaced at the APVMA, particularly under the leadership of Mr Joyce as the Agriculture Minister. And Mr Matthews in his report does attribute some of those problems to the decision by Mr Joyce to forcibly move the APVMA to Armidale. You might recall when that decision was made about 90 per cent of the APVMA staff at the time did not agree to move to Armidale. That caused massive disruption which impacted on the performance and culture of the APVMA.

But my view is that the last thing we need to do is have a repeat of that chaos and disruption by forcibly moving the APVMA back to Canberra, or anything like that. So really what we're trying to do today is take another step forward to build a better and stronger APVMA. It's a really important institution, not just for the Armidale community but to the Australian agriculture industry. We want it to be a really respected regulator with a very good workplace culture. Obviously there were some very significant cultural problems that had developed there, and I'm pleased to see that that is turning around under the new management and the efforts of the staff. So we want to continue that by -

READING: Did Mr Matthews recommend the APVMA stay in Armidale as well?

WATT: So there are a couple of recommendations that Mr Matthews made that we are rejecting while accepting many of the other recommendations he's put forward. He did recommend that there be a staged transfer of the APVMA back to Canberra, and we are rejecting that recommendation. One of the reasons I guess that he has made that recommendation, is that he's also recommended that rather than keeping the APVMA as an independent statutory authority, that it be moved into the Federal Department of Agriculture as a separate unit with its independence preserved by legislation. We're also rejecting that recommendation.

My view is that it's very important that the APVMA both in reality and perception remains an independent authority. We need to make sure that its decisions are science based, can't be influenced by government, can't be influenced by departments, and the sort of decisions it makes are about whether particular agricultural or veterinary chemicals come on the market and stay on the market. They've got to be science based; they've got to be free of politics. And my concern was that if it is moved into the Department, even with some independence preserved, it will not look independent and there is a risk of its independence being comprised.

So, we are rejecting those recommendations to move it into the Department and to move it back to Canberra. But there are many other recommendations that Mr Matthews has put forward that we have supported either in principle or partially or fully, and we'll get on with implementing some of those over the next few months as well.

READING: Okay. I understand it's not mandatory though, even though you're keeping the APVMA in Armidale, it's not mandatory for staff to live and work in Armidale, so will people be able to live and work in Canberra for the Department?

WATT: They will be able to work and live in Canberra for the APVMA rather than for the Department, and in fact that's actually happening right now, Kristy. I think people would be surprised to know that about 40 per cent of the APVMA's staff currently are in Canberra even though it is based here in Armidale. One of the recommendations that Mr Matthews has made which we are accepting is that at the time the decision was made to move the APVMA to Armidale, the then government also issued what's called a Government Policy Order which required staff of the APVMA to be based in Armidale. As I said, the way it's turned out is that 40 per cent of people don't live here anyway despite that order being issued. We have agreed with the recommendation from Mr Matthews that that order be repealed. And really that is partly to reflect the reality that people do live in different locations and work in different locations.

But also the way the things have turned out is that, there have been some highly specialised roles that have been very difficult to fill at a local level here in Armidale, and I suspect that's why we have seen some of the growth of the employment numbers in Canberra. What we're going to do is repeal that order which requires people to be based in Armidale, leave it to the APVMA management to come up with the right person in the right location for the right role. Many times that's going to be Armidale in future. Obviously, the headquarters will be here, the building we still have a 10-year lease over in Armidale, so the APVMA is not moving.

But we recognise that just like every other Federal Government department the management need to be able to make decisions about where to best place people. The APVMA is actually the only federal agency that has this policy order applying to it that requires its staff to be based in any location. So what we're going to be doing is bringing it in line with every other federal agency. The way federal departments and agencies work is that people work in multiple locations around the country. My department, the Department of Agriculture, there are people in probably dozens of locations around the country and the majority of people don't work in Canberra, and we're really just bringing the APVMA in line with that.

READING: Are you setting the APVMA up to fail, the headquarters to fail in Armidale though if that flexibility is given?

WATT: No, I don't think we are, Kristy. And as I say what we're really doing is bringing the APVMA in line with every other federal agency and, you know, I don't think that other federal agencies are set up to fail by having that ability to hire people in different locations, and I don't think that will be the result for the APVMA either. I'm very confident that the majority of staff at the APVMA will remain in Armidale for a long time to come. But, for example there have been difficulties at times locating people in Armidale who have experience in federal procurement practices, and that has been one of the problems that's surfaced in recent years. Armidale is a great town, has a lot of great people. It probably doesn't have a huge number of people with regulatory legal experience, but you do get those kind of people in Canberra.

But equally, we know that there's good scientific staff here and there's some great partnerships being forged with the University of New England that we think will provide a pipeline of employees, some of their graduates coming to work in the APVMA in Armidale doing that scientific work. So really it's about horses for courses and making sure that we can get the right people in the right location, but Armidale will remain the headquarters.

READING: Will you release Mr Matthews' review -chis evaluation - publicly?

WATT: Yes, we'll be releasing that this morning, Kristy, so people will have an opportunity to read their way through that and see what he's had to say and see what his recommendations are. We'll also be releasing a preliminary response from the Government. As I say, what we wanted to do at this point in time was provide some certainty to the community, to the staff, and to all of the stakeholders of the APVMA about some of those key recommendations. There are other recommendations that we haven't got a detailed response to at this point in time, but we'll be consulting further on those and working on those in the next couple of months.

READING: We understand you've had Mr Matthews' evaluation, you know, for six months or so now. What's taken so long?

WATT: Yeah, I did receive the report from Ken Matthews towards the end of October last year. But my view was that these were some really important decisions that we needed to make in an orderly manner. I recognise that there has been some uncertainty here in Armidale in particular and that's why I thought it was important that we at least respond to those recommendations now while we work through some of the others.

But this is about setting this organisation up for the long term and having the structure right and try to move beyond some of the chaos and dysfunction that we've seen under the former government. If that takes a little bit more time to get right, then I think that's a good investment of time.

READING: Okay. Mr Watt, we'll have to leave it there this morning but thanks for joining us about this today.

WATT: No worries, Kristy, good to talk.