The national pesticides authority failed to consider the risk staff would resign over its controversial move to Armidale and is unprepared to manage the problem, an audit report says.
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In a report released on Thursday, the national auditor found the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority is resorting to rolling recruitment campaigns to deal with staff resignations.
The authority, where staff departures reached nearly 20 per cent in 2015-16, reported it was struggling to find regulatory scientists to replace those walking out the door since the Coalition government decision to move it from Canberra in November 2016, the auditor's report said.
By late 2016, the agency's chief executive warned the government it was experiencing a 'higher than normal rate of staff departures' and asked industry peak bodies how the APVMA could prioritise its assessment workload.
"The CEO noted that the authority had exhausted all avenues to fill regulatory scientist vacancies in its residues team and that there were staffing pressures in the pesticides, health, environment and chemical review teams," it said.
Almost one quarter, or 48, of the pesticides authority's workforce resigned between July 2016 and February 2017, including 20 regulatory scientists, while the 57 staff who started were mostly non-ongoing, particularly in IT, case management and administration.
The auditor said the agency should improve its reform efforts given its pending relocation.
However it scolded the authority over its risk management and said its treatments of risks to staffing levels had not been effective.
The agency proposed three strategies to address risk of staff losses in 2013 and 2014, involving looking at external employment contracts, increased recruitment via tender, and renewing outreach to universities.
It also had only mixed success in making reforms legislated in 2014 aiming to make it more efficient and reduce the cost burden of regulation on agvet and pesticides businesses, the Australian National Audit Office said.
Many of the reforms were yet to be made more than four years after they were developed.
"Further, the authority is not well placed to determine the extent to which reform objectives have been met in the absence of a robust set of performance measures," it said.
Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce said the report reinforced the Coalition's decision to relocate the agency.
While the APVMA accepted the auditor's recommendations to improve risk management and governance and performance measures for the reforms, it said that considering their scale, the timeframes it was given to achieve them were challenging and resources were limited.
Reforms moved into a more "mature phase" in mid-to-late 2016, and 78 per cent of product applications were processed within timeframe in the June quarter 2016 and 83 per cent in the September quarter 2016, it said.
The auditor found the APVMA had seen a drop in efficiency since 2014 and had not reduced the cost of regulatory burden on businesses seeking product approvals.
Agency officials told senators in an estimates hearing last month it struggled through May with a 15 per cent staff vacancy rate as it dealt with an influx of work.
Its rate of departing staff reached 19 per cent in 2015-16, dwarfing the APS' average of 7 per cent, as the Nationals promised Mr Joyce's New England electorate it would host the APVMA if it re-elected them at the 2016 federal poll.
