John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. I refer to the government’s decision to abolish the 40 per cent rebate on quarantine export services and to increase fees to exporters by up to 1,352 per cent. Given that Australia’s competitors do not impose full cost recovery on their meat, fish, horticulture and seed exporters, can the minister say how many of Australia’s 50,000 meat workers can expect to join the Rudd redundancy queue as a result of this new tax on exports?

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for agriculture for his question. He refers to the abolition of the 40 per cent export subsidy which was proposed in the budget papers of the previous government. The previous government had it expiring at the end of the current financial year, and it does expire at the end of the current financial year. We had ABARE model what the cost would actually be to exporters, and the ABARE modelling came back that the costs to exporters would be equivalent to a half of one cent movement in the Australian dollar.