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 (APVMA) 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.
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In releasing the review on Friday, Watt said Clayton Utz uncovered “serious allegations of poor governance, poor workplace culture and poor leadership that are clearly left the APVMA at risk of not meeting those integrity standards”.
“The review has found examples of potential non-compliance with commonwealth procurement rules of the APVMA, very high staff turnover and an acceptably 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 tended the resignations from their respective roles “in recent days”, and said a nationwide search will 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”.
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2023-07-13 22:01:42
Original from www.theguardian.com
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