The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), as the name suggests, is supposed to regulate agricultural chemicals and vet medicines in Australia. Instead, it’s been a hotbed of regulatory failure, incompetence, industry capture and extensive allegations of staff misconduct. And its failures are down to one man: Barnaby Joyce.
After allegations of serious misconduct — including a senior staff member urinating on colleagues — were aired last year, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt demanded the APVMA conduct an independent review of what was going on inside the organisation. The damning review was released on Friday.
Among the findings:
- The APVMA was too supine in its use of enforcement powers for fear of upsetting the industry and too inclined to see its role as helping industry, not regulating it;
- Its review program was so poorly resourced and conducted that some chemicals had been under “review” for two decades;
- It can’t do the public service’s basics in areas such as procurement and financial management;
- It has an extraordinarily high volume of complaints from staff, ranging across all areas, including allegations of nepotism, mental health concerns, failures of complaints-handling and inappropriate behaviour.
The chair and CEO have both resigned. Environment and agriculture division head Melissa McEwen is acting CEO while a governance review by former secretary Ken Matthews is carried out.
Time and again the independent report identifies Joyce’s decision to move the APVMA from Canberra to his own electorate in 2016 as a key reason for many of the problems.
Another review, by big four consultant Ernst & Young in 2016, spelled out just how ill-advised the move was. Despite the report being commissioned by Joyce’s department, at Joyce’s request, it still found “the economic benefits for the Australian economy associated with moving the APVMA from Canberra to Armidale are modest. This is because the strategic and operational benefits of having the APVMA operate out of Armidale appear to be limited”.
The move would be a net cost to the Commonwealth, and the “risks associated with moving the APVMA are significant”.
For consultants being paid to give Joyce a reason to move the agency, it was a remarkable report — they told him it was a terrible idea instead. And the biggest risk was that “the APVMA may be unable to relocate, or recruit and replace, key APVMA executive, management and technical assessment staff”.
That’s exactly what happened, according to the report last week, which found “less than 15 of approximately 140 full-time employees stayed with the APVMA”.
“Only a small proportion of previous APVMA staff moved from Canberra to Armidale,” the report found, “and it may be inferred that the new staff and lack of previous APS [Australian Public Service] knowledge and experience impacted the operations of the APVMA.” Overall:
The relocation of the APVMA’s main office to Armidale perhaps also fundamentally changed the APVMA — if for no other reason than the APVMA had a very significant turnover of staff, including a change in CEO, associated with the relocation.
This turnover of staff would have inevitably resulted in a loss of corporate knowledge, a loss of corporate culture and a loss of experience and knowledge of what it is to work within the APS. This may include practical awareness of foundational public service principles, such as the need to adhere to the APS values.
So exactly what Joyce was told would happen if he moved APVMA to his electorate happened, and it trashed the agency.
The Nationals are renowned for shameless pork-barrelling. Usually the only victims are taxpayers and the public interest. But the victim here is an agency with the important task of regulating the chemicals that enter Australia’s food chain at the source, an agency that was used as a pork plaything by Joyce, despite clearly knowing what would result.
It’s not a patch on the outrageous abuses of robodebt, but in its way it’s every bit as rotten a piece of public policy. Many of his colleagues wonder why Joyce continues to soil public life with his presence. After this, voters ought to wonder why Joyce remains in Parliament at all.
Just what IS the purpose of a Barnaby Joyce? All this Barnaby Joyce seems to have done throughout its time as both leader of the Nationals and a senior minister was to make a mockery of any semblance of good government with its clownish performances, its laughable attempts at administering its portfolios and its sad and pathetic meshing of its rancid personal life with the parliament.
THIS Barnaby Joyce is clearly defective. Do we need a new one? Never!
Abbott called Joyce a great “retail politician”. Partly correct in that Barnaby’s principal focus in life appears to have been chasing “tail”, between beers.
… And he’s for sale?
i could not care less – yuk – but i do care when scabs steal our water and flogg off in bad bargained cartels
apparently he was a crowd controller, like the mad monk ( abbott). he had to many hits to the head.
There are a lot of comments here wondering why Joyce is still in Parliament, given his record. He’s there because of his record, not despite it. He’s Barnnnnaaaaby. And if there’s one thing upper NSW/lower QLD country voters love, it’s a bumbling, corrupt, incompetent, own-nest-feathering, mumbling, grammatically-challenged pollie. Like Joh, or Bob. They remind them of themselves, loveable, self-interested lummoxes, unbeholden to facts and statistics, and free from the sort of political ethics that make those southern wankers bleat on about global warming, animal rights, gay alphabets, and darkies wanting a Voice on something. Barnaby. He will be around forever, waving the flag for the Great White Unthinking.
Not a word wasted or out of place. First rate analysis and comment. Describes all that is wrong about a significant minority of our population.
Ditto, in droves. A trumpesque figure, with whom many of his electorate can identify, even envy.
well for all the ignorant deals their house is failing – sold off to corrupt multnational profiteers – look at Brisbane and Sydney ugly dust bowls starved of essential services ; users pay but are cheated
One thing about Cousin Jethro :- if you expect the worst from him, he’ll never let you down.
Him and his “Elect Me for Jobbies for New England” ….. Where’s Gina?
Last week Littleproud* felt compelled to hold forth on where he thought Morrison’s future didn’t lie (unlike Morrison) – why can’t he be as honest about “ex-Fearless Leader”?
[*That doorstop – there was Price, again…. Everytime I get my camera out I expect to see her pop up…..]
The people of New England knew exactly what they were getting when they elected Barnaby Joyce. Having failed to move to the lower house after being blocked by the Queensland Nationals, he rediscovered his New England connection. He then literally priced his kids when Vikki Campion and him made a deal with 7 for an exclusive interview – absolutely nothing for his 4 daughters that he used as props throughout his political career, but 100K for, at the time, 1 son. Of course the agency he relocated to his own electorate was staffed by self-interested, poorly behaved boofheads.
There are now 16 BTL comments on this article and I agree with almost all of the points made.
However there is one other aspect of this that no-one has yet commented on. In 2017 Joyce lost his MP position because he was in breach of S.44 of the Constitution. There was a by-election in early December 2017 in which he won back the seat. Then PM Turnbull was thrilled: “getting the band back together” were his words. By mid-February 2018 Turnbull was lamenting the fact that BJ had inflicted “terrible hurt and humiliation on his wife, children and new partner”.
To my ever-lengthening list of the errors of MBT I must remember to add that he sat by and allowed a vital and competent APVMA to be gutted and re-located by the actions of his Deputy PM. Not just on climate change was MBT a huge disappointment.
Turnbull got what he wished for ….
at least with Barnaby we knew what we would get;
Turnbull stood for nothing, & that’s what we got!
A nice little case of “Be careful what you wish for.”
Or, in Turnbull’s case ‘Be careful saying what you wish for’? He is a lawyer … that ratio of ‘words : truth/reality’.
As to the final question of the article, you came closest of the 16+ comments to get at why her persists in Parliament. In 2017 Turnbull ensured Joyce (and other constitutionally-ineligible MPs) would not have to pay back their parliamentary salaries, but their time served as far as superannuation entitlements might have been reset to zero.
Someone other than Joyce – whose skill as an accountant and filler-out-of-government-forms is always in question – should probably clarify with the Department of Finance as to how many elections Joyce has left to stand in to get access to a parliamentary pension.
My understanding of it several years ago was 3 elections or 8 years, whichever is achieved first. Things may well have changed.
I think that is correct. And since 2001 those who lose their seat after 3 elections or 8 years, no longer have immediate access to a lump sum and cannot cash in their superannuation benefits under a certain age (60? I think). Frydenburg was an example and after his defeat in 2022 there were quite a few quite wrong assertions about a huge pension being immediately available to him.
It’s probably why #30 is hanging in. He is most unlikely to get another job (too much of a reputational risk was the PwC assessment of employing him) and will not have access to any superannuation for a few years yet.
He might have to go on Newstart.
If Gina has any loyalty whatsoever (an open question) then she will be waiting to present Joycie with a big fat cheque on retirement. Or a consultants job for Hancock Prospecting….Director of Noodling in Armidale.
no got to empty his bank account before one is elligible – yep ! what ignorance abounds
It has indeed changed and conjecture in subsequent comments is all wrong.
Parliamentary Pensions, as we knew them, ceased to exist in 2004,as a result of Mark Latham’s one positive contribution to public life (ie, shaming John Howard to change Parliamentary Pensions). Since that time, parliamentarians receive “employer” superannuation contributions which are very similar to C’wlth Public Servants. They contribute to an accumulation fund like most of the rest of us.
Barnaby Rubble was first elected in 2004, and never qualified for a defined benefits Parliamentary Pension.
well the remuneration already gained can pay him off