WAFarmers

13/10/2026

All Quiet on the Western Front - For Now by WAFarmers CEO Trevor Whittington

Something strange has happened in the West.

The guns have gone quiet.

A year ago the Albanese Government's decision to close the live sheep trade had farmers marching in the streets, Keep the Sheep signs hanging from farm gates and Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins facing a hostile reception whenever she ventured west.

Today, all is comparatively quiet on the western front.

Not because the live export ban has disappeared. The trade is still legislated to end on May 1, 2028.

Not because the roadmaps, strategies, transition advocates, consultants and grant programs have suddenly solved the structural problems facing the WA sheep industry.

Something much simpler has happened.

Sheep are worth money again.

And Minister Collins must be thanking her lucky stars.

This winter produced record national sheep and lamb prices. The National Mutton Indicator reached 916¢/kg in July, while the Trade Lamb Indicator hit 1,244¢/kg.

WA wasn't left behind. Katanning recorded a yard record of $418 for extra-heavy lambs in July.

Wool has joined the party, with the Eastern Market Indicator approaching 1,900¢/kg.

Suddenly, keeping sheep doesn't look quite so stupid.

But before Canberra starts congratulating itself on the success of the transition, it is worth remembering one uncomfortable fact.
Government didn't create these prices and government can't guarantee they will last.

The history of the sheep industry is one long lesson in commodity cycles.

In March 2020, the National Mutton Indicator hit what was then a record 729¢/kg.

Three and a half years later it was 103¢.

That is an 86 per cent collapse.

Then the wheel turned again.

By July this year mutton was at 916¢ and trade lamb at 1,244¢.
Boom. Bust. Boom.

Anyone who has owned sheep for more than five minutes knows the routine.

It doesn't take much to change the market. A dry spring, a surge in turn-off, processors reaching capacity, China slowing, American consumers tightening their belts or disruption in the Middle East can quickly change what happens under the auctioneer's hammer.

Wool tells much the same story.

The EMI started 2020 around 1,600¢, fell below 900¢ later that year and is now approaching 1,900¢.

Yet Canberra's transition plans necessarily stretch years into the future.

We now have a WA Roadmap to 2028, a national Future Flock strategy, transition advocates, productivity programs, processing grants and almost $140 million of Commonwealth assistance.
Some of that money will be useful and farmers should take every dollar available.

But no roadmap repeals the commodity cycle.

And underneath today's excellent sheep prices, the structural competition for land continues.

In WA's medium and higher rainfall regions, where sheep have traditionally been important, more pasture has been converted to cropping. The same trend continues in parts of the Lakes region.

The economics are straightforward. If the return per hectare from grain continues to beat sheep often enough, farmers will keep shifting hectares into crop.

And once the sheep yards, fences and labour disappear and another thousand hectares goes under crop, getting those sheep back isn't as simple as changing a line in a government strategy.
That is why today's prices have delivered Canberra a remarkably fortunate political window.

High sheep and wool prices have taken much of the immediate heat out of the live export debate at precisely the time the Government is rolling out its transition programs.

But commodity markets have short memories and sharp teeth.

In 2023, sheep that producers had spent years breeding were suddenly worth a fraction of what they had been worth months earlier.

There is nothing in the fundamentals of commodity agriculture that says that cannot happen again.

History says it will.

The only questions are when, how far prices fall and what the WA sheep industry looks like when they do.

So enjoy $250 lambs — if you can get that price — and strong wool prices while they are here.

But don't mistake a commodity boom for a successful government transition strategy.

The guns on the western front have gone quiet because sheep are worth money again.

Canberra's real test comes when the auctioneer's hammer falls the other way.

And it will. Because when the market turns, one thing will be different from every downturn before it: the live exporters won't be standing at the saleyards bidding against the processors.

No roadmap, strategy or government grant can replace a bidder that Canberra legislated out of the market.

12/10/2026

GRDC from Farthing to Fortune by WAFarmers CEO Trevor Whittington

Australia’s roughly 20,000 grain growers are locked into a compulsory research model almost unique in the wider economy. No other major sector is required to surrender a fixed percentage of gross revenue to a statutory research corporation. Australia does not impose a compulsory one-per-cent levy on the value of iron ore, gold or lithium to fund a statutory mining R&D corporation.

So why agriculture — and after 35 years of GRDC, should growers finally be asked two basic questions: how much should they pay, and who should control the organisation spending their money?

Understanding how we got here is worth a brief trip back in time.

Foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in 1801, 1804, 1871 and 1872, together with repeated black stem rust epidemics through the nineteenth century, encouraged farmers, agricultural societies and colonial governments to build agricultural science capacity. Experimental farms, field stations and agricultural colleges followed, with Australia’s first agricultural college, Roseworthy in South Australia, established in 1883.

William Farrer initially financed his own wheat-breeding work before being appointed Wheat Experimentalist by the NSW Government in 1898. His rust-resistant Federation wheat was released in 1901.

Western Australia was the first State to formalise a voluntary grower contribution under the Soil Fertility Research Act 1954, allowing growers to authorise deductions from grain payments for local research. Compulsion followed in 1957 when the Menzies Government introduced the Commonwealth wheat research levy at one farthing per bushel, initially about 0.14 per cent of wheat value.

The levy rose gradually over subsequent decades, reaching 45 cents per tonne by the late 1980s, equivalent to roughly 0.3 per cent of wheat value.

The next major structural change came in 1989, when the Hawke Government introduced the Primary Industries and Energy Research and Development legislation. Previously, research levy funds flowed through the Wheat Industry Research Council and State committees, with much of the research undertaken by State departments of agriculture. Under the new model, statutory Research and Development Corporations such as GRDC could commission research, prepare multi-year plans, employ staff and accumulate reserves.

The Coalition Opposition supported the new PIERD model but raised concerns about accountability to growers and argued that voluntary commercial contributions to industry R&D should also qualify for Commonwealth matching support.

At the same time, the research levy moved from a flat cents-per-tonne charge to an ad valorem levy. Within a few years the research burden rose from roughly 0.3 per cent of wheat value to 1 per cent — more than tripling the rate. Parliament debated the new levy framework, but the 1 per cent research component was subsequently determined through the Grains Council of Australia rather than a direct ballot of levy-paying growers. The rationale for such a large increase in compulsory research funding has largely been lost in the mists of time.

What has not been lost to time is the fact that growers still have no regular direct vote on the levy rate, while Commonwealth matching does not extend dollar-for-dollar across the full grower contribution.

The imbalance remains today. The grains R&D levy is 0.99 per cent of value, while the Commonwealth effectively caps its matching contribution at around 0.5 per cent of industry gross value of production. Growers are therefore compelled to contribute at almost twice the percentage at which Commonwealth matching reaches its ceiling.

In 2024–25 growers contributed $237.9 million to GRDC while the Commonwealth contributed $134.3 million, providing almost two-thirds of the combined funding. At the very least, it proves that the government understands the law of diminishing returns which is why it caps its contribution to half a percent.

That question matters even more because the Grains Research and Development Corporationarch environment has changed dramatically since the levy was created. Much of today’s genetics, machinery, software and farm technology is developed internationally and bought through commercial markets. Yet the levy remains based on a model created when agricultural research was far more domestically focused.

Nor should one per cent of gross revenue be dismissed as trivial. Recent Planfarm benchmarking indicates average grain businesses are generating returns of around 3 per cent before tax and drawings. What looks insignificant as a percentage of turnover looks very different against farm profitability, particularly in years of compressed margins. Demanding growers hand over a third of their surplus to fund the universities would never have passed a vote if farmers had been given the opportunity.

GRDC’s balance sheet raises another question. Its reserves are heading towards a billion dollars. At what point does GRDC define the reserve it actually needs and justify all the marginal dollars it spends by cost benefit analysis.

Nor is it enough simply to cite analysis suggesting returns of $6–$9 for every dollar invested. If the marginal return on the next levy dollar were genuinely that high, the argument should be for a 2 or 3 per cent levy, not a lower one. GPA’s 2022 levy review concluded the R&D component could be reduced without materially affecting GRDC’s delivery, which sits uneasily with the suggestion that every additional levy dollar continues to generate the headline $6–$9 return.

There is also a distributional question. New technology and cutting-edge agronomy are not adopted evenly. Larger, better-capitalised farms are generally better placed to test and extract value from new research, while less profitable businesses may be constrained by debt, scale or the inability to finance adoption.

ABARES data show the largest 10 per cent of broadacre farms accounted for 56.3 per cent of output between 2021–22 and 2023–24. That does not prove redistribution from slower adopters to progressive farmers, but it does raise a legitimate question about who captures the benefits from marginal R&D compared with who is compelled to finance it.

The counterfactual is just as important. If GRDC did not fund a project, would the innovation disappear, arrive later, or emerge anyway through private companies, universities, CSIRO, overseas researchers or growers themselves?

The proper comparison is what Australian grain production, productivity and profitability would look like without GRDC, with growers retaining their levy money and relying on private R&D, overseas technology, publicly funded science and their own investment decisions.

If GRDC is confident the present levy delivers returns of $6–$9 for every dollar collected, it should commission a genuinely independent economic study of that counterfactual. It should examine the marginal return on the current levy rate, the distribution of benefits, the contribution of overseas and private R&D, and the return growers might have earned had the money remained on farm.

There remains a strong case for compulsory funding of biosecurity, exotic disease, pre-commercial science and uniquely Australian agronomic problems. The case is weaker where benefits are global or commercially captured.

Australian levy-funded research is readily accessible to Russian, Argentinian and Canadian grain growers, while many productivity gains identified decades ago remain unrealised at home. Acidic soils still need lime, compacted soils need amelioration and non-wetting soils remain untreated. Given the choice, many growers may prefer a $30,000 investment on-farm to a $30,000 compulsory R&D contribution.

International comparisons further complicate the case for a near-one-per-cent levy. A British cereal grower pays 58 pence per tonne, equivalent to around 0.3 per cent of crop value at wheat prices of £180–£200 per tonne, and that levy funds not only research but market development, benchmarking and knowledge exchange.
Canadian growers typically pay around 0.3–0.4 per cent of crop value. US state assessments are broadly similar: Kansas and North Dakota charge US2 cents per bushel, equivalent to roughly 0.3–0.4 per cent at typical wheat prices, while Montana’s 2.5 cents per bushel equates to around 0.4–0.5 per cent.

These charges commonly fund research alongside marketing, extension and advocacy, and many are refundable. Australia’s 0.99 per cent GRDC levy therefore sits at roughly two to three times the rate commonly imposed in several major competitor jurisdictions.

A levy that began at around 0.14 per cent of wheat value has grown to 0.99 per cent. Growers contribute well beyond the Commonwealth matching ceiling, GRDC controls reserves moving towards a billion dollars, competitor countries generally impose lower compulsory research burdens, and levy payers themselves do not regularly get to vote on the rate.

The question, therefore, is not whether Australia should abandon agricultural R&D. It is whether a compulsory R&D tax designed for another era — set at more than twice the rate paid by many of our competitors, difficult to quarantine for the benefit of Australian growers, and never directly approved by grain growers — remains fit for purpose in 2026.

Perhaps it is also time to revisit who controls GRDC. MLA became industry-owned in 1998 and AWI in 2001. GRDC itself examined moving away from the statutory model in 2014, when an independent governance review found its structure constrained agility and commerciality and contemplated an eventual transition to an industry-owned corporation. The issue was again referenced in GRDC’s 2019 independent performance review, but the transition never occurred.

Moving GRDC into grower ownership would inevitably challenge established interests, including those whose businesses and careers depend on the existing grains R&D structure. After 35 years as a government controlled statutory corporation, growers should at least be asked two questions: how much should they pay, and who should control the organisation spending their money?

08/10/2026

Episode 7 of ON WAFarmers podcast is out.

If you ever wanted to know what WAFarmers gets up to. Or you were curious about the huge amount of work that goes in to being the voice for our Members by our volunteers Council Presidents and Committee. Or, if you are impacted by:

- Paraquat is still in play.
- The mouse bait that actually works got a permit.
- Fertiliser companies were pushed to honour contracts worth an estimated $50 to $70 million.
- Family trusts kept their primary-production carve-out.
- Now restricting phosphine is on the table, with a proposed limit the trade says it can't even measure.
- The diesel excise rebate is under fresh political pressure.
- A flash-point change tied to renewable diesel would make almost every on-farm tank non-compliant.
- The GRDC levy needs sorting out, with about $800 million sitting in reserve.

Then this podcast is for you.

WAFarmers Vice President Mic Fels and WAFarmers Grains President Mark Fowler sit down for a chat about the wins and challenges Western Australian farmers have faced in 2026.

All epidsodes found be searching "ON WAFarmers" on:
- YouTube
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts

Grains President Mark Fowler rattles off a fri...

05/10/2026

Phosphine: When the Regulator Fails Its Own Risk Test
by Trevor Whittington, CEO of WAFarmers

Western Australian grain growers are about to become the subjects of a rather large workplace safety experiment, only nobody appears to have bothered running the experiment before the rules arrive.

From 1 December, the allowable eight-hour workplace exposure limit for phosphine will fall from 0.3 parts per million to just 0.05ppm, while the current short-term limit of 1ppm will be replaced by a peak limit of 0.15ppm.

That is a sixfold reduction in the allowable average exposure to the fumigant upon which Australia’s grain-storage system depends.

Nobody in agriculture disputes that phosphine is dangerous. It is toxic and must be handled properly. The issue is how Western Australia has arrived at harvest, with a major regulatory change only weeks away, while thousands of growers are still asking the most basic question: what, exactly, are we supposed to do differently?

Safe Work Australia began reviewing workplace exposure standards years ago. Public consultation occurred between 2019 and 2021 and work health and safety ministers agreed to the new limits in 2024, with national implementation scheduled for December 2026.
That sounds like plenty of notice.

Except notice of a regulation is not the same thing as preparing an industry to comply with it, and apparently nobody spent those intervening years doing the obvious work of establishing how a phosphine limit of 0.05ppm actually operates on a Western Australian grain farm.

That is the regulatory failure at the heart of this issue.

Phosphine is not some obscure laboratory chemical. It is the principal fumigant used to protect stored grain from insect infestation and sits squarely in ordinary harvest operations involving silos, augers, field bins, trucks and sheds.

WorkSafe says air monitoring is required where a business cannot be “reasonably certain” that airborne concentrations are below the relevant limit.

Reasonably certain?

There is a phrase built for a departmental briefing note and completely useless in the real world of grain farms.

How long after fumigation is it safe to auger grain from a silo? What happens when that grain goes into a field bin, through another auger and into a truck? What about the worker shovelling spilled grain, sweeping a shed or standing over a truck while it is loaded?

At what point is the concentration below 0.05ppm, how is the farmer meant to know, and what instrument is supposed to prove it?

These are routine jobs undertaken on grain farms every harvest.

Nor is the answer simply to buy a $1,000 handheld phosphine meter and congratulate ourselves on another successful regulatory intervention. A detector may tell you phosphine is present; that does not necessarily establish compliance with an eight-hour limit of 0.05ppm or a 0.15ppm peak limit.

So where were the real-world trials?

Where were the monitors on farmers unloading silos, operating augers and loading trucks? Where were the measurements taken during normal grain handling, and where is the practical guidance telling growers how long grain should be ventilated, what equipment is required, how it should be calibrated and what records they need to demonstrate compliance?

This work should have started when the national decision was made.

It didn’t.

And that is where WorkSafe WA has some explaining to do.
There is also a question of leadership. Sally North became WA’s substantive WorkSafe Commissioner on 1 July 2024 and is Western Australia’s representative on Safe Work Australia. If anyone inside the system was well placed to ring the bell with the grain industry about a major national change to phosphine limits, it was the Commissioner.

Yet growers have reached the eve of implementation still asking what they are meant to measure, with what equipment and against what practical operating guidance.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that government has become exceptionally good at demanding its Departmental Heads in Safety, Agriculture, Housing, Children etc ensure their staff are complying with diversity targets and undertake indigenous awareness training while the less glamorous business of actually working on the ground with stakeholders is overlooked.

WorkSafe has, to its credit, put more focus on agricultural safety in recent years. It established a specialist agriculture team in 2023, developed farm safety guides and attended agricultural events. Its own strategy talks about information, specialist advice, education and practical guidance.

All worthwhile.

But a specialist agriculture team should not exist only to react to generic statistics about farm incidents confusing hobby farms with real farms or holding meetings with the unions and the CWA claiming they are engaged with the farming community . It should also be looking over the horizon for tomorrow’s regulatory risks, working out how national decisions will affect WA farms and engaging early enough that industry has time to adapt.
That is not an optional extra for a safety regulator.

It is called risk management.

WorkSafe tells farmers that good risk management means identifying hazards, assessing the risk, consulting the people doing the work and putting controls in place before somebody gets hurt.

It is difficult to see why the regulator should be exempt from its own advice.

A national decision to cut the permitted average exposure to one of agriculture’s most widely used fumigants by more than 80 per cent should have lit up the dashboard in 2024.

It should have triggered early engagement with growers, WAFarmers, PGA, CBH, grain organisations, fumigation specialists, chemical suppliers and occupational hygienists.

It should also have triggered on-farm testing and a practical education program explaining what was coming and what growers would need to change.

Instead, WorkSafe’s general campaign telling businesses to prepare for the new limits appeared in the middle of this year, only months before implementation.

Publishing a regulation is not industry engagement.

Nor is it reasonable to suggest that because ministers made the decision years ago, individual farmers should have been following the regulatory machinery through Canberra and preparing themselves.

Farmers cannot be expected to spend their evenings reading every communique generated by a national regulatory committee.
That is why regulators exist.

One obvious question is how often WorkSafe inspectors visiting WA farms over the past three years raised the impending phosphine change.

Did they discuss fumigation practices? Did they explain that the permissible exposure level was going to fall by more than 80 per cent? Did they tell growers what monitoring might be required?
If not, this is no longer simply a debate about whether farmers received enough notice. It is a question about whether the regulator adequately managed a regulatory risk it knew, or certainly should have known, was coming.

Victoria looked at the same national standards and asked a refreshingly practical question: can industry actually implement them?

WorkSafe Victoria commissioned a Regulatory Impact Statement, consulted affected industries and examined compliance costs, monitoring capability, access to occupational hygiene expertise and the impact on smaller businesses.

That process identified significant practical concerns and Victoria proposed deferring the introduction of new limits for 15 contaminants, including phosphine and grain dust, until December 2029.
Victoria did not abandon worker safety. It recognised the obvious distinction between setting a standard and being ready to implement it.

Western Australian growers are entitled to ask why the same question was not asked here and what the commissioner is doing about it.

The State Government now finds itself, just months from implementation, seeking answers to questions that should have been resolved years ago.

Agriculture Minister Jackie Jarvis said recently that she was seeking further information about the impact of the new phosphine limits on the grain industry.

As usual the Minister is completely out of touch with her portfolio. Not that it would worry her. Cross portfolio issues are the least of her concerns.

The international comparison also warrants some humility.
US federal limits remain at 0.3ppm over eight hours, with a 1ppm short-term limit. Ontario uses the same figures, while the United Kingdom uses 0.1ppm long term and 0.2ppm short term.

Australia’s 0.05ppm limit is therefore not simply some settled international standard that everybody else has already adopted.
There may well be sound scientific arguments for a lower exposure limit. But a laboratory-derived health limit and a paddock-ready regulatory system are not the same thing.

At a recent meeting with FarmSafe WA, the department indicated that individual farmers may be able to seek a 12-month exemption.
If that becomes the solution, we will have reached peak bureaucracy.

Even if only 10 per cent applied, what happens to everybody else?
More importantly, why create hundreds or potentially thousands of bureaucratic transactions to address what is plainly an industry-wide implementation problem?

The obvious answer is an industry-wide solution.

Western Australia should follow Victoria’s lead and provide enough time for proper testing, practical guidance, education and implementation.

WorkSafe’s own strategy says it wants to drive workplace change through education, specialist advice and enforcement, and to provide guidance that is effective, coordinated and timely.
But words on a departmental web site are meaningless if the head of the Agency is not engaged.

For years, WorkSafe has been telling farmers to identify risks early, consult the people doing the work and put effective controls in place before something goes wrong.

On phosphine, it is time for the regulator to follow its own advice. But judging by where we are heading, farmers may need the spacesuit before they get the practical guidance. And as for net zero — at this rate we are well on the way towards net zero phosphine, net zero dust and net zero farmers.

02/10/2026

Guess what?

The backpacking army is on it's way to Western Australia in time for harvest.

WAFarmers has done an INSANE amount of work this week getting our Members' Working Holiday Makers visas over to Dept of Home Affairs via the National Farmers' Federation for approval.

But the work didn't start this week. We have been at this for weeks; keeping it in the media, collecting the grass roots level of impact information, writing articles, webinars, podcasts, diverting resources to this most important issue. On and on it went.

But giddy up!! Many of our Members are celebrating today as they get word their visas are being approved.

Thank you National Farmers' Federation for working tirelessly this week as well. It takes many strong voices to get these type of results.

Need help with your WHM visas? Call us on 94862100

24/09/2026

What? Paraquat frustratingly back in the news again. Thanks to David Pocock

Paraquat: Science, Politics or Lawfare? by WAFarmers Grains Council President, Mark Fowler.

The APVMA has spent years reviewing the science on paraquat. So why is the Senate doing it all again—and why did the Coalition help make it happen?

WAFarmers Grains strongly disagrees with the Senate’s decision to hold a parliamentary inquiry into the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority’s recent decision on paraquat.
At issue here is something much bigger than paraquat. It is whether Australia wants agricultural chemical decisions made independently, on the science, by people with the expertise to understand it—or whether those decisions are to be re-litigated through the political process whenever someone doesn’t like the outcome.

Why we have an independent regulator.

The APVMA exists for a reason.

It is staffed by people with the scientific and technical expertise to assess complex and often competing evidence. It operates under legislation specifying the matters it can consider. Its processes are designed to manage conflicts of interest, exclude irrelevant considerations and apply appropriate evidentiary standards. Importantly, it must give reasons for its decisions.

Its decisions are also subject to the rule of law. If a decision has not been made according to law, there are established avenues for review.

That is how an independent regulatory system should work.
The Senate is not a scientific regulator. Senators are not required to have expertise in toxicology, epidemiology, occupational exposure or environmental risk assessment. Parliamentary committees do not operate under the same statutory framework or evidentiary requirements as the APVMA.

Of course Parliament has a legitimate role in scrutinising whether our regulatory system is working properly. But there is an important difference between examining the performance of a regulator and effectively re-running a particular scientific assessment because some people disagree with its conclusion.

The science has already been reviewed.

That distinction is particularly important here because there has been no shortage of scrutiny of paraquat.

The APVMA’s review extended over many years. It received 171 submissions from scientists, doctors, agricultural organisations and other interested parties. Following its proposed decision in 2024, the APVMA says it considered another 134 peer-reviewed studies dealing with possible associations between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease.

Nor did the APVMA simply wave paraquat through.

It imposed significant new restrictions on its use. But having considered the evidence, it concluded that the available evidence did not convincingly demonstrate a direct causal link between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s disease.

That is the conclusion some people apparently cannot accept.
Senator David Pocock says experts have approached him expressing concerns about the APVMA’s assessment and that its conclusion appears contrary to what he regards as the scientific consensus.

Those concerns are entitled to be heard. But disagreement with the regulator’s conclusion is not evidence that its process was deficient.
There are scientists who believe there is an association between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease. There are others who disagree about what the evidence establishes. The existence of experts advocating a particular position does not resolve the question. What matters is the quality, independence, relevance and weight of the evidence.

That is precisely why we have a specialist regulator.

Scientific questions are not resolved by counting how many experts can be assembled on either side of an argument. Nor should regulatory decisions be determined by which side generates the most media coverage, political pressure or emotive commentary.
The independence of the science matters too. Industry-funded research should be scrutinised, just as research produced or funded by parties with an interest in litigation should be scrutinised.
Evidence should not automatically be accepted or rejected because of who paid for it. It should be assessed on its merits.

Again, that is what expert regulators are there to do.

A dangerous precedent.

There are also real costs to holding another inquiry.
The APVMA, chemical registrants and agricultural representative organisations have already devoted substantial resources to this review. Grower organisations will now have to divert more time and money into revisiting many of the same issues.

That burden is particularly significant for organisations such as WAFarmers, which are funded by only a proportion of the farmers they represent and rely heavily on volunteer grower representatives.

There is an opportunity cost for the APVMA as well. Every hour its technical staff spend responding to another inquiry is an hour they cannot spend progressing other chemical reviews or assessing new chemistry. Australian agriculture needs a well-resourced and efficient regulator capable of reviewing existing products while getting new and potentially better chemistry into farmers’ hands.
The precedent is even more concerning.

What happens the next time the APVMA undertakes a lengthy scientific review and reaches a conclusion that a sufficiently influential group dislikes? Do we simply hold another Senate inquiry?

What confidence can farmers or chemical companies have in the regulatory process if completing the statutory process is merely the first step, followed by a second round in the political arena?
Australian grain growers are not ignorant of the risks associated with paraquat. We know it is acutely toxic. That is precisely why it is handled with considerable care.

Modern broadacre farming bears little resemblance to some of the imagery presented in this debate. Growers use closed-loop mixing systems, appropriate PPE, filtration systems, drift-management practices and controlled re-entry arrangements. The APVMA has now strengthened a number of those requirements further.
Paraquat is also particularly important in Australian farming systems because of our climate, minimum-tillage farming and the continuing challenge of herbicide resistance.

So when politicians say they are acting to protect farmers, they might first listen to the farmers whose health they say they are protecting.

This is not an argument that agricultural chemicals should be beyond scrutiny. It is an argument about who undertakes that scrutiny, how it is undertaken and what evidence determines the outcome.

In the case of paraquat, that scrutiny has just occurred.
Yet on September 8, the Senate referred the APVMA’s June decision to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee. Its terms of reference go directly back over the scientific evidence, the adequacy, transparency and independence of the APVMA process, the possible association with Parkinson’s disease and even whether Australia’s regulatory framework should change.

Which brings us to the question: how did we end up with this inquiry at all?

Why did the Coalition support it?

Senator Pocock proposed it. The Greens supported it. But crucially, so did the Coalition.

And it is the Coalition’s role that Australian grain growers are entitled to question.

Before agreeing to an inquiry into a chemical of such importance to Australian grain production, did the Liberal and National parties speak to the people who actually use it?

WAFarmers certainly wasn’t consulted. To my knowledge, neither were the other peak grains bodies before the Coalition decided to support the inquiry.

If that is correct, it is extraordinary.

Paraquat is not some peripheral issue for Australian agriculture. It is an important tool in minimum-tillage farming and managing herbicide resistance. At the very least, you would expect parties that continually remind us of their connection with regional Australia to pick up the phone and speak to the peak organisations representing the farmers most directly affected before supporting an inquiry of this nature.

Had they done so, they might have discovered that grain growers have already spent years participating in the APVMA process and the concerns that those grain growers have in doing it all again, particularly in a forum where it can be politicised, sensationalised by the media and where the rigour and integrity of the process is questionable.

There is an uncomfortable political question the Coalition should answer.

Why was it prepared to support Senator Pocock and the Greens on an issue of considerable importance to Australian farmers without first consulting the peak grains bodies representing those farmers?
Was it simply a judgement that another inquiry would do no harm? Did the Coalition genuinely believe a Senate committee could add something that the specialist regulator had missed?
Or was there also a political calculation that supporting a crossbench initiative on this occasion might generate goodwill with senators whose votes the Coalition may need—on this or other matters—in a Senate where crossbench support can be important?
I don’t know the answer, and I am not suggesting there was any bargain or agreement. But Australian farmers are entitled to ask the question.
Farmers shouldn’t be political bargaining chips
Parliamentary politics necessarily involves negotiation and compromise. Parties support other senators’ motions for all sorts of reasons. But agricultural policy—and the interests of Australian farmers—should not become bargaining chips in the process.
If the Coalition has a substantive reason for believing the APVMA’s paraquat decision required another inquiry, it should explain what it is.

The Liberal and National parties have historically presented themselves as parties that understand agriculture and regional Australia. With that claim comes a responsibility to understand the consequences of decisions affecting farmers before making them.
On this occasion, it appears they supported the inquiry first and left many of the farmers affected to find out afterwards.
That is the wrong way around.

Senator Pocock and the Greens have made their position clear. What is much harder to understand is why the Coalition chose to facilitate it.

Australian farmers should not become collateral damage in the management of relationships on the Senate crossbench.
We have an independent, specialist regulator for a reason.
Let it do its job.