The board chair and CEO of Australia’s agricultural and veterinary chemical regulator have resigned, as an independent review found “serious and systemic issues” within the organisation.
The federal minister for agriculture, Murray Watt, said the government would take “firm action” to ensure the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority’s integrity after the review’s findings.
Law firm Clayton Utz carried out the review at Watt’s request after allegations were raised at Senate estimates that a senior member of staff at the APVMA had urinated on other staff members at a Christmas function in Armidale in 2021. A separate report on that incident was completed in February 2023 and the matter was referred to the Australian federal police.
In releasing the review on Friday, Watt said Clayton Utz uncovered “serious allegations of poor governance, poor workplace culture and poor leadership that clearly left the APVMA at risk of not meeting those integrity standards”.
“The review has found examples of potential noncompliance with commonwealth procurement rules of the APVMA, very high staff turnover and unacceptably higher number of workplace complaints,” he said.
“Concerningly, the review also includes allegations of industry capture of the APVMA. It appears to have played a key role in the APVMA not performing its full regulatory responsibilities.”
Watt confirmed the CEO and board chair had tendered their resignations from their respective roles “in recent days”, and said a nationwide search would be conducted for their long-term replacements.
Among the findings was “an unacceptable volume of personnel-related complaints” with a formal complaint recorded every four to six weeks for the past five years, with the agency – which employed 129 people as of 30 June 2022 – having recorded 56 personnel-related complaints between 2018 and 2023. Of those, 21 were allegations of inappropriate behaviour.
The report authors concluded there were “clearly cultural issues” with the organisation and that while “some of the complaints were very serious” there appeared to have been “little if any reporting of these matters to the board”.
“There was no reporting that we could find of any kind of these matters to either the department or the minister, meaning that matters were not escalated and relevant action could not be taken.”
It also found the APVMA had focused on targets around the timeframes for registering agvet chemicals at the expense of undertaking monitoring and compliance activities, that it had taken an “educational approach” to enforcing regulations rather than applying stronger penalties and that its approach to regulation “appears to align with industry interests”.
Watt said the report also found that the former Nationals leader and agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce’s decision to move the regulator to Armidale resulted “in a loss of corporate knowledge, a loss of corporate culture and a loss of experience and knowledge of public sector values”.
Joyce’s office was contacted for comment.
Watt said he had asked for a “rapid evaluation” of the APVMA’s structure and governance, which the former public servant Ken Matthews would undertake and report back on by the end of September.
A nationwide search for the head of the agency and board was under way and Watt had also issued a ministerial direction for the finalisation of reviews of eight chemicals which had been ongoing for more than 17 years, each.
“This is the first time ever that this type of ministerial direction has been given to the APVMA,” Watt said.
“I have conveyed to the APVMA board and executive the need for swift action on these reviews. We cannot continue to have reviews of chemicals drag on for decades, this is not good regulatory practice.”
Watt said he maintained confidence that the nation’s food was safe, with the review finding no examples of chemicals being used inappropriately while other programs which monitor chemical usage have not raised any concerns.
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, criticised Labor for its response to the scathing APVMA report, accusing the government of “breathtaking hypocrisy”.
Littleproud, the shadow agriculture minister, claimed Labor had not supported a Coalition push for a governance board for the APVMA between 2019 and 2021.
“Labor is now complaining about a lack of governance into the APVMA from 2019 to 2022, despite originally being opposed to a board that would have provided governance to the APVMA,” he said.
Littleproud noted that the report found systemic issues between 2019 and 2022, “which was the time the former Coalition government was trying to make improvements”.
An APVMA spokesperson directed questions about the review to the minister.
“The APVMA board and interim executive accept the findings of the final strategic review report and ministerial direction and have undertaken to continue to work diligently towards addressing the findings of the review and act in accordance with the directive immediately,” they said.
