If you were fearing the loss of some important chemical activities due to the cost implications of increased red tape from legislation, you can now take a breather. In its bid to reduce the red and green tape cost burden on the agricultural sector (by up to a billion dollars a year), the Federal
Senate has repealed the legislation imposed last year, that specified more frequent approvals and registration of currently used pesticides, through the
passing of the above mentioned bill.
This in turn will allow all weed and pest controllers continued access to cost effective pest management solutions that involve chemical usage in their toolbox that may have otherwise been discontinued in Australia due to increased compliance costs on registrants.
The flip side to this is that there is now a greater onus on all of us as pesticide users to always follow best management practice in the transport, storage, handling and application of pesticides. If we fail in our duty of care in this regard, the APVMA will mitigate these failures with heightened label instructions or even de-registration of the pesticides under chemical review as a result.
So keep up your ChemCert training, read and follow label instructions, particularly dosage, WHP and Re-Entry Intervals, calibrate your sprayer equipment properly, monitor the weather and use the best engineering controls available to control spray drift as highlighted by GRDC and others.
Make these practices your standard operating procedures, and the world will continue to demand quality Australian fibre and produce for years to come, and regulation will lean to the supportive end, rather than the corrective.