This is a sample of The Echidna newsletter sent out each weekday morning. To sign up for FREE, go to theechidna.com.au
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Peeing on colleagues at a Christmas party is never a good idea. Besides being abusive and unhygienic, it also reveals the toxic culture within the organisation on whose watch it occurred.
But we should be grateful the incident happened because it's finally lifted the lid on a government agency that should be ensuring the chemicals we spray on crops won't give us cancer or harm us in other ways.
A review triggered by the urination has found the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to be lacking abysmally, captured by the very industry it was supposed to be regulating, and mired in poor workplace practices. Not that we needed reminding, it also cast sunlight on the disastrous end result of Barnaby Joyce's cack-handed decision to shift the APVMA to his own electorate in 2016 in an utterly transparent pork barrelling exercise.
The APVMA CEO and board chair have both walked the plank but Barnaby's still there, red-faced but not from embarrassment, his mess now left to the government to clean up.
Like the rest of us, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt was shocked by the findings of the review.
"There were clearly cultural issues with the organisation given that on average there was a formal complaint about once every four-six weeks for five years," author of the review, law firm Clayton UTZ, said.
But that was internal strife. For consumers who rely on the APVMA to make sure the chemicals used on food crops and for livestock are safe for humans, the findings were even more disturbing.
"Concerningly, the review found serious allegations of chemical industry capture of the APVMA, which appears to have played a key role in the organisation not performing its full regulatory responsibilities," Senator Watt said.
Reviews of chemicals banned in other jurisdictions around the world but still in use in Australia had been ongoing for 10, even 20 years, without being completed. Senator Watt has ordered they now be brought to conclusion. One of those reviews concerned paraquat, a deadly herbicide linked to Parkinson's disease and banned in the European Union since 2007. Submissions to the review closed in 2019 but here we are, four years later, and still no conclusion.
We should have seen the trouble coming.
The month before the last federal election, then agriculture minister David Littleproud trumpeted with fanfare the appointment of the APVMA's inaugural board, including its chair Carmel Hillyard, who last week resigned after the release of the scathing review.
"The APVMA Board will be the accountable authority and set the APVMA's strategic direction, drive its operational performance, and set an appropriate risk management framework," Littleproud said at the time. "I congratulate the new members of the APVMA Board and look forward to working together to continue to deliver efficient, effective, timely, and science-based agvet chemical regulation for Australia."
A few weeks later, Littleproud had rolled Barnaby Joyce for the Nationals leadership and was sneering from the opposition benches.
The government is now giving serious consideration to moving the authority back to Canberra to try to rectify a semblance of good governance, which evaporated with the enforced move to Armidale and the loss of key staff and corporate knowledge which ensued.
It has commissioned former public servant Ken Matthews to undertake a further inquiry into the APVMA. But Matthews' involvement does not sit well with some. Matthews, the architect of the fraught Murray-Darling Basin Plan, is also the former chair of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council of Australia, whose founding members include the National Farmers Federation, Ausbiotech and CropLife Australia.
Prominent on CropLife Australia's website is a defence of glyphosate, or Roundup, which is suspected of causing cancer, banned in a number of countries and faces its licence in the EU ending without renewal at the end of this year. Croplife International's board of directors includes members from chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer.
Matt Landos, a veterinarian and longtime campaigner for tougher regulation of agricultural chemicals, says the horse has long bolted as far as industry capture of our government agencies is concerned.
"I expect that will not change," he told The Echidna. "It's not just the regulator who's been captured. The Agriculture Department and the minister are also captured."
Landos directed The Echidna to a photo of Senator Watt, on the minister's Twitter account, addressing a budget breakfast sponsored by ... CropLife. "No influence to see here," he quipped.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you trust our system of regulating agricultural chemicals and pesticides? When preparing food, do you ever wonder about the chemical residues in fresh produce? Do you still use Roundup in your garden? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
SHARE THE LOVE: If you enjoy The Echidna, forward it to a friend so they can sign up, too.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- One of Queensland's richest businessmen will establish a $10 million battery factory in the Philippines in a fresh bid to tap into the "once-in-a-century" renewable energy transition. Trevor St Baker signed contracts to establish the lithium-ion battery factory this week, with commercial production expected to begin early next year.
- The expiry of low fixed-rate loans continues to haunt the Reserve Bank and featured prominently in its decision to keep interest rates on hold. The central bank's board also feared a sharper than expected pullback in economic growth. Minutes from the July cash rate decision confirm the RBA once again weighed up the case for another 25 basis point hike as well as pausing rates.
- Farmers across Australia and New Zealand are putting their dogs to work for the eighth annual Cobber Challenge. Twelve finalists have been chosen out of hundreds to compete for the title of Australia's hardest working dog. The kelpies, collies, crosses and heading dogs will wear GPS trackers to record distance travelled, average speed and overall duration of each work day.
THEY SAID IT: "The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertiliser and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place." - David R. Brower
YOU SAID IT: A mischievous bandicoot snuck into the burrow during the night and posed an old question about Vladimir Putin and the Wagner rebellion, which was unrelated to the topic of the day: the warm, dry winter and the growing risk of bushfire.
"Welcome back," writes Lee. "I hope you feel very relaxed. Your words echo mine from a conversation this weekend, only to be shut down and told I was a doomsayer. As for Putin. I would be surprised if Prigozhin hasn't fallen out of a window or had a bad cup of tea by now. I think Putin will do anything to hold on to power. He is currently trying to put the USSR back together so he can lead it. It has been harder than he thought."
Sue writes: "I have no idea whether Putin will survive the fallout, although my gut reaction is that he may well. What I am quite certain of is that he will do something, or many somethings, dreadful in his attempt to do so. What's the saying about leopards and spots?"
"Whatever happens to Putin, let's hope it's something dreadful (or at least very uncomfortable for him)," writes James. "The death and human misery he has caused, and is still causing, is all as a result of his ambition to return to glorious Soviet times where he can expand his personal rule of fear and intimidation over a greater population. Democratic nations need to fight harder for freedom, so that Putin and his ilk are never able to gain a foothold anywhere around the globe. A big ask. Autocrats and dictators abound wherever they can manage to suppress the media and instil fear in the people."
Stuart writes: "To even try to predict Putin I would have a far better chance of winning the lottery. Putin was a victim of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a former KGB officer Putin remains incensed. His attempts to turn back time have been made very difficult by the resolve of the citizens of Ukraine compounded by the opposition of NATO and the free world. The unintended consequence for Putin is the increase in membership of NATO and the rearming of the West. Will Putin do something silly? I don't think so."
"Sadly Putin seems to have already done much to take control again both militarily and through propaganda," writes Jennifer. "Prigozhin has been controlled and has disappeared. There appears to be a new head of Wagner using the battle-hardened mercenaries to boost the training of Russian soldiers in friendly Belarus. When Putin said Wagner Group does not exist, he meant that it had been taken over by Russia and was now part of the Russian military rather than an independent commercial group."